Saturday 20 November 2010

'Nuff said

By the always excellent Ben Goldacre, picking up a piece from here.

One interesting note is the CiF comments, which split almost precisely between "I support nuclear power, what's your problem, people aren't that stupid"; and "I don't support nuclear power, this is terrible manipulation and typical of the nuclear industry".

It is an emotive issue, of course, but it always a shame when people can't (at least make an effort to) separate their personal preferences from a methodology in this way. Whether you support nuclear power or not you should be able to make a reasoned judgement about the way in which the poll was conducted.

I suspect this links into widespread mistrust of opinion polling and statistical techniques. Many people simply don't believe these can provide truly useful information and are by definition to be mistrusted (being linked to spin, focus groups etc.). So the idea that (for example), the survey might be wrong but the idea of a station still a good idea is a bit too challenging.

The preference for nuclear (or not) comes first, and this informs judgement of the survey, whereas in reality this are two quite distinct things.

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