Penn & Teller: Bullshit! - Criticism

Criticism

In the episode "Family Values", Penn acknowledged his and Teller's biases, saying, "We're fair and we never take people out of context. We're biased … but we try to be honest." Still, Dennis Cass of Slate magazine has criticized the duo for resorting to the same sensationalism as their targets, stating in a review of the series, "One of the unwritten rules for winning an argument against an inflammatory, irrational opponent is to calmly adhere to a loftier set of rhetorical standards. Penn and Teller showily throw this notion out the window."

Noel Murray, in an otherwise favorable review in The Onion A.V. Club, opined that Penn & Teller, despite being skeptics, are not dedicated to fact-based debunking or inquiry data retrieval, commenting:

Bullshit! isn't journalism, exactly. The show is one-sided by design: P&T's field interviewers rarely confront their subjects with the evidence against them, preferring to let the crackpots ramble on so that Jillette's voice-over rejoinders can score points without inciting a real argument.

At The Amaz!ng Meeting 3 Penn and Teller were asked about the evidence for their Secondhand smoke episode being faulty. Penn Jillette, with Teller sitting at his side, said "What we talked about during the show was where the stuff was there", meaning that he was using the data that the government had when they instituted the ban, then said regarding this episode they were "very likely" wrong. Penn went on to describe "a new study that came out of England, just recently, that seems to have more stuff about it" and "right now, as I sit here, there probably is danger in secondhand smoke." He went on to say that this was a small portion of the program, and their main point was their opposition to "outlawing" smoking in privately-owned businesses, which they still "stand behind 100%."

Robert Todd Carroll, author of The Skeptic's Dictionary, originally sided with the show's conclusion that there was no link between secondhand smoke and cancer. But Carroll changed his conclusions after further investigation into the studies. Carroll concluded that the studies were biased, and consequently decided that secondhand smoke does have negative effects on people.

During an interview on the January 31, 2007 episode of The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, Teller claimed that the final episode of the show would be about "the bullshit of Bullshit!" and would detail all the criticisms that they themselves had of the show; however, the series ended before such an episode aired.