TY - JOUR T1 - On ‘On Bullshit’ and the removal of nutrition from words JF - British Journal of General Practice JO - Br J Gen Pract SP - 342 LP - 342 DO - 10.3399/bjgp22X720029 VL - 72 IS - 720 AU - John Spicer Y1 - 2022/07/01 UR - http://bjgp.org/content/72/720/342.abstract N2 - Readers of the BJGP will be familiar with the idea of bullshit, in its tangible or rhetorical form, perhaps depending on their practice location. However, my aim here is to recommend a source of commentary on the phenomenon: ‘On Bullshit’ originally published as an essay (https://tinyurl.com/mr2add9v) in 1986, and again in 2005 as a book,1 by the eminent US philosopher, Harry G Frankfurt, now aged 93. He is most famous for his analysis of freedom of will, a subject that any GP has to know something about in daily work, but here I am concerned only with his thoughts on bullshit.I daresay GPs often think ‘… what bullshit … ’ or perhaps more polite equivalents, when confronted with NHS management-speak or the new guidance on pretty much anything that crosses our busy desks; though Frankfurt aims to be rather more analytical. At one point he opines: ‘Just as hot air is speech that has been emptied of all informative content, excrement is matter from … ER -