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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."
Maybe they are simply falling prey to Acts of God.
Need to post some boxes that say 'contains god' and see if it gets there quicker than the control.
"XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, use more." - Anonymous Coward
Their experiment is not correllation/causation.
They have identified something which is painfully obvious. The samples in this experiment are large enough to prove that the atheist branding has affect on the delivery and that it only happens like this in the US.
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.
When they are at home or in their groups, let them say and think whatever they want. Let them march and protest and hold up signs expressing themselves. But when they are out there delivering things? Now they are interfering with commerce. Sorry, hommies, but government doesn't play dat.
Sounds more like a USA problem than a USPS problem, this being an outlier of religious beliefs among wealthy nations. Atheist Shoes needed to send packages via FedEx and UPS in the same way to actually test this, and apparently didn't.
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...
Something with good enough QA that you do not need to pray it keeps working.
Does that mean ... they have no sole?
Now repeat the experiment with labels saying things like
'porn'
'lots of money inside'
'this package contains: newest iPhone'
I'm really interested in the outcome.
New theory: people love atheist products, so they get snatched more often by the postman.
It would be really interesting to do this experiment with tracking devices that logged their GPS locations periodically over 3G, and had multiple week-long battery life. The 'lost' packages could be tracked and it could be determined where they ended up. Mail fraud is a federal crime, but if it became a big national story with media shining light on the person(s) who were caught doing it, then it would likely result in some change, people going to prison, and the system improving to better serve the recipients of packages.
Most products are agnostic, really.
but these are shoes. they can go to either heaven or hell 'cause they've got soles.
Kudos to Red Dwarf.
20 minutes into the future
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.
Cast off the shoe, Follow the gourd!
Ice Cream has no bones.
Lister: Sometimes, I think it's cruel giving machines a personality. My mate Petersen once bought a pair of shoes with Artificial Intelligence. 'Smart Shoes' they were called. It was a neat idea. No matter how blind drunk you were, they could always get you home. But he got rattled one night in Oslo and woke up the next morning in Burma. You see, his shoes got bored going from his local to his flat. They wanted to see the world, you know. He had a hell of a job getting rid of them. No matter who he sold them to, they'd show up again the next day. He tried to shut them out, but they just kicked the door down.
Rimmer: Is this true?
Lister: Yeah. The last thing I heard, they sort of... robbed a car and drove it into a canal. They couldn't steer, you see.
Rimmer: Really?
Lister: Yeah. Petersen was really, really blown away about it. He went to see a priest. The priest told him... he said it was alright and all that, when shoes are happy that they'd get into heaven. You see, it turns out shoes have 'soles'.
Rimmer: Ah, what a sad story. Wait a minute.
[Thinks for a minute]
Rimmer: How did they open the car door?
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.
I think you missed the point of the story - USPS cross-checked the packages and finding no cross, discarded them.
Eloi are stupid, throw morlocks at them!
I would believe it if it were done by an impartial third party with a good reputation for professional survey taking, such as J.D. Power & Associates.
Oh this one was done by Atheist Shoes themselves? Nevermind.
Logical fallacy, appeal to authority. If you have a particular problem with the statistical methods involved, which are described in the article, you should raise that issue. But your comment as it stands is utterly without merit.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
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.