The Best We Can Do? The Rise of Bullshit Research

It's time for a new enlightenment.

Do you feel it?

The sense that this civilisation has run out of creative juice.

That we’ve reached the cliff edge of the Enlightenment.

That big ideas are dead, killed off by the technocrats of the ruling class.

If an idea is proposed that doesn’t grow the economy, does it really exist as a thought?

This sense struck me hard recently reading BBC Focus, a popular science magazine. One of the articles was about a team of university researchers in California using AI to predict hit pop songs.

Professor Paul Zack said: “Streaming services can readily identify new songs that are likely to be hits for people’s playlists more efficiently, making the streaming services jobs easier and delighting listeners.”

There is so much of this going about. Click on any science tab at any of the big media outlets and there’ll be a story about a research "breakthrough" that crushes the soul. Here’s a ground-breaking study from the news today about how smiling makes you more attractive.

Dr Christian Valuch, who led…