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USPS Discriminates Against 'Atheist' Merchandise
fish waffle writes "Suspecting that their strongly branded 'Atheist' products may be treated differently by more religiously-oriented postal regions, Kickstarter success Atheist Shoes conducted an experiment. They sent 178 packages to 89 people in different parts of the U.S., each person receiving one package prominently branded as 'Atheist' merchandise, and one not. The results: packages with the atheist label were nearly 10 times more likely to be 'lost,' and took on average 3 days longer to show up when they did. Control experiments were also done in Europe and Germany — it's definitely a USPS problem."
A true study would have equal numbers marked and unmarked. Also, did they change their origination point? If not, that could also skew the data.
If I had a dollar every time an atheist cried like a little bitch.....
I guess not reading the article makes you ask stupid questions.
Equal number of marked & unmarked packages. both sent out at the same time. both sent to the same address. They did this with 89 different people.
Be seeing you...
This detail difference is a strong indicator as to the motivations behind what is going on. In short, "unprofessional behavior." With all the troubles the USPS is having, these professionals should be more concerned about delivering value in the service they provide. Instead, the political affiliations (religion is politics, don't kid yourself) of participants entrusted with delivery are affecting how well they do their jobs.
Unless the "lost" packages are the result of "concerned citizens" swiping them off of porches/out of mailboxes and tossing them in the trash (or into the book-burning-mobile). I grew up in a "religiously oriented" part of the US and had so many Darwin fish vandalized or removed from my pickup that I eventually switched to sticker on the inside of the rear window. After that I just got nasty notes and middle fingers from other drivers.
Actually, I wrote my thesis on life experience.
That is what the article says.
Maybe because your experience doesn't include shipping packages with prominent 'Atheist' branding?
Yeesssss... And less than 1% of non-Atheist branded packages were lost.
Yes, you certainly seem to be hard of understanding.
Now repeat the experiment with labels saying things like
Well, the same experiment with "fragile" boxes containing an accelerometer showed that they get beaten up far, far worse than an unmarked box.
Of course, for that one, we didn't really need more proof - I get somewhere around 100 assorted deliveries per year, all in great shape; even when they arrive in torrential rain and sit outside all day, I find them neatly bagged, perfectly safe and dry... Unless the sender stupidly marked them "fragile". Then I get a box at least badly frayed on all sides, often damp (even when delivered in dry weather, seriously, WTF), frequently with the corners blown out or other large inexplicable holes in the sides. I honestly don't think I've ever received a "fragile" package that didn't look like a second-hand box-fort from Afghanistan.
Sad, really... I mean, most of us don't exactly love our jobs. We may enjoy some parts of it, but on the whole, we'd still rather sleep in. But we get up every day to earn an honest day's pay. If you need to slack off a bit, hey, just don't get caught; but when you start taking out your lack of a fulfilling life on the very products they pay you to handle - GTFO.
Apparently applying good scientific standards to an experiment is flamebait.
I'm sure there's something to be said about blindly accepting the results of flawed experiments so long as they match your beliefs here...
While we seldom read the article it's still acceptable to read the summary.
" They sent 178 packages to 89 people in different parts of the U.S., each person receiving one package prominently branded as 'Atheist' merchandise, and one not."
Every person was sent two packages, one marked "Atheist" and one unmarked. Since the packages were sent to different parts of the U.S. we know that the delayed "Atheist" packages weren't on the same truck. That invalidates his entire post from the summary alone.
If we now read the article we also know that the packages were all sent at the same time and to 49 different states. From this we know that a normal sorting of the two packages going to the same person should have made the two packages follow the same path the entire way, going on the same truck and be delivered at the same time.
With a bad sorting and just random delivery the average delay should have been the same between the two packages.
The fact that 9 packages marked with "Atheist" never were delivered and that only one unmarked went missing could be explained with regular disgruntled employees stealing packets marked with a known brand. (Even if the shoe size is most likely wrong.)
The average extra delay of three days can not be explained that way. We can remove the out-lier in Michigan that was delayed with 37 days and get the average down to 2.5 days but it is still pretty clear that "Atheist"-market packages are specifically removed from regular deliveries to make the recipient suffer.
The thing where the delay was different between different destination also indicates that this isn't a single person early in the chain of delivery that did this but rather that it is a distributed occurrence.
There are a lot of conclusions we can't make from this test but as long as those conclusions aren't made I wouldn't call it a flawed experiment.
You should also note that the reason the shoe brand decided to do this experiment was because they noticed a trend among customer complaints in the U.S. and that some customers requested that the package were to be sent unmarked.
Actually, IAAS (I am a statistician) and the statistical tests that they used are the appropriate ones for this study. Assuming they're not faking the data, they have done the analysis correctly.
Unlikely, atheists have by far the lowest criminality of any religion type.
Meanwhile in Belgium a report was just published on "how to integrate muslims : reasonable demands" by the minister for integration.
Of course no searches on such a document, nor on Maggie De Block, the Minister for Secretary of State for Asylum, Immigration and Social Integration find anything remotely like this.
I grew up in a "religiously oriented" part of the US and had so many Darwin fish vandalized or removed from my pickup that I eventually switched to sticker on the inside of the rear window. After that I just got nasty notes and middle fingers from other drivers.
So this surprises you, somehow? You freely acknowledge that you grew up in an area with a lot of fundamentalists, and are surprised that people might be offended by you loudly advertising your belief in something that disagrees with their beliefs?
You're as bad as the Christians, if you don't understand why they may be offended by that.
No, you inferred surprise. At the time I was a teenager and felt the need to distinguish my truck from all the Jesus fish, bumper stickers telling me I was going to hell, crucifixes hanging from rearview mirrors, etc. Now I don't own a car and live in a town that is ~80% atheist/non-religious.
And no, I'm not as bad as the Christians because I never vandalized their cars, accosted them on the street, kicked them out of the Boy Scouts, got the middle school science teacher fired, or protected the pedophile gym teacher because of their religious views. Personally I think that it is childish to flip off a stranger because something on their car offends you.
Actually, I wrote my thesis on life experience.
I'm not sure where you're getting your definitions/meanings of words, but here on planet Earth, atheism is the rejection of belief in the existence of deities and agnosticism is the view that the existence or non-existence of deities is unknown or unknowable.
As an atheist, I don't have "faith" in the absence of god - I just look at the available evidence and realise that gods are equivalent to invisible pink unicorns. I don't have faith that invisible pink unicorns don't exist, I just haven't seen any evidence to support their existence (and thus I believe that only fools would think they exist).
You're a temporary arrangement of matter sliding towards oblivion in a cold, uncaring universe
And yet atheists are still the least liked segment of society. We're held in even less esteem than muslims.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
What, exactly, do you mean by "it wasn't a statistical sample"? "Statistical sample" is not a statistical term.
It was a perfectly valid sample over delivery routes, it had a meaningful if not fabulous N, and it also had a control that most data can only dream of. The non-response rate was 4 out of the 89, which means that there really wasn't a chance of selective response removing the significance.
And all the packages WERE NOT delivered. 9 out of 89 packages "atheist" packages never arrived, versus 1 out of 89 "non-atheist" packages. Do 10 percent of your packages get lost? Because I order a lot of stuff by mail, and I don't see lost packages enough to even notice it.
p=.018 on the lost packages. Medical studies wish they could hit that kind of significance on a regular basis. p.001 and a huge effect size on the delays; that sort of thing is treated as more or less certainty in a lot of places, including biology and all of the social sciences.
The only way you could invalidate that would be if you assumed that somebody was outright lying: either the people running the study, or a LOT of the recipients.
I'm forced to conclude that you wouldn't know a "statistical sample" if it bit you on the behind.
And in that case, with a large number of samples you would expect BOTH types of labeling to be equally subject to being split from their partner package and delayed. But that didn't happen, to a high degree of statistical significance.
Slashdot needs a "-1, Wrong" moderation option.
The Urban Hippie