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Math Indicates Pollster Is Forging Results
An anonymous reader writes "Nate Silver suggests the political pollster Strategic Vision is 'cooking the books. And whoever is doing so is doing a pretty sloppy job.' Silver crunched five years worth of their polling data, and found their reported results followed a suspicious pattern which traditionally suggests fraud. The five-year distribution of the numbers 'is not random. It's not close to random.' The polling firm had already been reprimanded by the American Association for Public Opinion Research for failing to disclose their methodology, though the firm argues they did comply with the organization's request. Their response to Silver's accusation? 'We have a call in to our attorney on this and fully intend to take action that will vindicate us.'"
From TFA, it looks like they handle a fair variety of sundry topics in American politics. Not a giant deal, I've certainly never heard of this particular outfit before; but I find it extraordinarily hard to believe that anything which increases the amount of false-but-plausible-looking noise in the world is a good thing.
On important topics such is more dangerous than on less important ones; but its mere existence makes the world a less knowable place either way. Either you have people believing false data, or you have people falling into the essentially nescient "all data are just source biases" position.
Pretend I know nothing about Pollster (which happens to be true). Why should I care whether they've faked results? By that, I mean: do they research options of favorite flavors of cotton candy, or public support for health care reform, or the best style of car, or...? In other words, do they do stuff that actually matters?
Faked polls = astroturfing.
Need I say more?
First of all, I don't think "What do I care" is anything but flamebaiting. Who cares if you don't care?
Second, if they're the same "strategic vision" that the article is talking about, their webpage says
"Strategic Vision has worldwide experience developing tools to measure decision-making, human behavior, attitudes and perceptions. Its globally relevant, comprehensive theory of human behavior creates the most effective strategies addressing decision-making in product development and communications in the widest variety of fields, including automotive, customer service, government and politics, medicine and healthcare, organizational and jury, travel and leisure, food and beverages, and education." So they probably report on anything you will pay them to poll on, or rather, anything you will pay them to make a graph from nothing.
Their self-reported client list. Granted, they may have just made that list up as well.
Lastly, a quote in TFA by the company gives you plenty of reason to care:
There you go: the company is mad about being uncovered and is doing the next step any stupid assholes do when their misdeeds come to light: sue in a vain attempt to keep the information from becoming well known. Therefore, -everyone- should know they're faking the results. I'm tempted to e-mail all their clients with a link to the article. If they go out of buisiness, maybe other shitty companies will finally realize you don't sue people who expose you as charlatans.
Bwhahahah, sometimes I say ridiculous things.
BREAKING NEWS:
The AP is reporting a major fuckup at Slashdot. The web site cannot even do the most basic task essential to its operation, allows readers to leave comments on articles. No comments were available from anyone employed by the web site. Phones rang and rang and rang. Several other Sourceforge properties had their numbers disconnected due to non-payment.
It is apparent no one in charge of the place gives even a sliver of a fuck, or even reads the front page after articles are posted, as it is 2009 and there are 50 fucking ways to notify the readership of the nature of the problem and the expected timeline for resolution. And that 50 is just from a fucking cell phone. If a person had an actual computer and an internet connection, even a netbook at a Starbucks, the number rises into the 1000s.
Long gone are the days when the popular geek web site devoted to technology actually worked. Long gone are the days when there were actual technical explanations of outages. Instead its more stories about politicians arguing over traffic ticket revenue posted as "Your Rights Online", iPhone slashvertisements, slashvertisements masquerading as book reviews, and links to people's blogs about blogs about news stories, and/or tweets about tweets about press conference summaries.
Well said.
I find it disturbing, too, that the media just reports the polling companies' results, without reporting things like what questions were asked, in what order, how the poll was conducted or who commissioned it, all of which can have a big effect on the results. A lot of "push polling" goes on, especially when the polls are commissioned by special interest groups, business associations, unions or political parties themselves.
I'm not in the US, so I don't know this polling company, but I've had a municipal, provincial and federal election in the past 12 months (with another possible federal election imminent) and I think polling and radio call in shows have a great deal of effect on people's opinions these days, more so than traditional newspaper and television newscasts.
If Strategic Vision was conducting fraudulent poles, I would be looking at their client list and going after whoever paid for them as well.
I don't care why you're posting AC
If the vote is to reflect public opinion, people should vote their own opinion. They don't need to try to help the system by guessing the most popular option.
I firmly believe that the insurance industry has been paying these pollsters to lower their numbers for the democrats to push them to drop health care reform.
Yeah, you go ahead and cling to the belief that the insurance industry doesn't want the health care bill to go through. Why would they possibly look at 30 Million people who aren't buying their product and support a bill that will require everyone, by force of law, to buy their product?
I'd certainly like to see some numbers regarding who the insurance industry as a whole is contributing to.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
the police are too far away. so we have a status quo here currently in the usa where hundreds of urban dwellers die every year from thugs with guns for the sake of a law which serves only the rural minority. but as the usa continues to urbanize further, and begins to equal european urban/rural ratios, political status quo will fall in line inevitably
and instead of HUNDREDS of urban dwellers dying every year for the sake of rural-friendly laws as we currently have, DOZENS of rural folks will die instead for the sake of urban friendly laws
inevitable. deal with it
"I am not FRINGE because I don't vote."
that's true. your SELF-DISENFRANCHIZED because you don't vote. your vote is your voice in your society. if you seek to not vote, you have willfully removed your own voice, you have chosen to be irrelvant. so why are you still fucking talking? you seek to not be a member of society. which is fine, drop out if you like: in which case, shut up and stop commenting on a society you freely choose not to belong to. if you want your opinion to be considered by us in this society, try to be a part of it by voting, and make your voice heard
but you don't get to drop out of society by your own choice and still think anything you say is relevant
if you want to be relevant, vote, and consider yourself to be a member of the same society as me. or don't, and, in logical coherence with that choice of yours, shut the fuck up
otherwise, there is absolutely zero for me to respect about anything you say, because by your own admission, you choose to not matter to me by not voting
oh you have your gun. awesome: why solve problems with voting when you can shoot, is that your point of view? fucking shizophrenic loser
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Web 2.0
Blank until
I love how the ".biz" TLD is effectively the "evil bit".
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