Addendum: The Daily Show beat me to it last night. Hat tip J-Walk Blog and Daniel Lippman.
Falsified Research
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Read this
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/08/the-smoking-gun-at-darwin-zero/
and start to reach your own conclusions.
I don’t put too much stock in these kinds of polls.
The large amounts of innumeracy and scientific illiteracy and the less vitrolic forms of anti-intellectualism in the world are givens.
With that said, anyone who believes this is the first example of falsifying or supplying misleading data or misinterpreting data or withholding data is sheltered or clueless or both.
“Science” is subject to the same human foibles as other human activities.
But we still push onward, through the fog.
Psst. Spoilers.
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The joke here is not about AGW – the poll doesn’t say anything about AGW; if you believe that the 2% skeptic population falsified research instead of just being skeptical, you’d check Very Likely too – but about Fox Math. 59% + 35% + 26% != 100% (weirdly, the original Rasmussen poll these numbers were taken from does add up to 100%). Remember the pie charts? Here we go again.
You know, there is psychological research that if I tell you x is true which I know is false, AND you even know or believe x is false, you will come to believe x is true.
Obama is a terrorist. Obama is not a US citizen.
Now ask, how many people believed x is true.
If you have no facts, your inclination is to believe in accordance with your overall beliefs.
This is true.
Or, is it false?
Original poll results are at http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/business/econ_survey_toplines/december_2009/toplines_climate_change_december_1_2_2009
FN added “Not Very Likely” and “Not At All Likely” into their 26%, then left off the “Not sure” answer altogether.
There is an interesting post about how Fox dealt with this error in light of their two-week old “zero tolerance” policy. (Spoiler: they claimed there was no error.)
http://mediamatters.org/blog/200912080051
This is a good example of how you can use polling to support false beliefs.
Just google the topic psychology of false beliefs.
Here is a link to a book: http://election.princeton.edu/2008/08/25/stopping-false-beliefs-lessons-for-journalists-from-brain-science/
Death panels, Obama is a terrorist, Obama is not a citizen, yada yada yada.
If you value your mind, do not let it be manipulated.
I vote very likely. However, I also vote “very likely” on the question of whether skeptics have cherry-picked etc. If we take anything from ClimateGate, it should be the conclusion that trusting authorities with multi-billion dollar incentives to get one answer or another is never prudent. For example, as Russ points out, we should not trust a Fox News interpretation of a poll on a heavily politicized subject. Quelle suprise!
What’s surprising me is how many people are actually outraged over this. Setting aside the fact that most people watching fox news are re-enforcing previously held beliefs, how do you see this graphic and not immediately notice the mistake? And if it does jump out at you, as it should, aren’t you either embarrassed as a fox network supporter or laughing out loud as a critic? This is the kind of stuff that goes viral, not sparks indignation.
Fox dropped the ball on this. Here’s the original question/results from Rasmussen:
3. In order to support their own theories and beliefs about global warming, how likely is it that some scientists have falsified research data?
35% Very likely
24% Somewhat likely
21% Not very likely
5% Not at all likely
15% Not sure
It looks like Fox meant to add somewhat+very likely and Not very + not at all likely, but botched it.
Incompetent journalism majors? Hoodathunkit?
Deliberate misrepresentation? You’ve provided a legitimate explanation. It’s confusing, but it’s similar to how approval ratings are typically presented. “President Obama has a X% approval rating, with Y% strong approving.”
It’s bad data presentation, but it’s not necessarily “deliberate misrepresentation,” which to me has a stronger connotation. It is accurate portrayal of the numbers, if you understand the 59% to be “at least somewhat likely.” The anchor, as you note, wasn’t on the same page. A problem of presentation, not innumeracy.
You’re correct that it is in some ways similar to what the scientists at CRU actually did, though.
Did Rasmussen falsify the laws of arithmetic to make poll results more shocking?
(Would have said “falsify the Peano postulates” but then fewer people would laugh and forward this on.)
Here, I think, is the relevant part from the Rasmussen Press Release on the poll:
Fifty-nine percent (59%) of Americans say it’s at least somewhat likely that some scientists have falsified research data to support their own theories and beliefs about global warming. Thirty-five percent (35%) say it’s Very Likely. Just 26% say it’s not very or not at all likely that some scientists falsified data.
MM wrote: “how do you see this graphic and not immediately notice the mistake?”
You are talking about the network that once labeled a hurricane “(D).” Normally I would not attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity, but Fox has something of a pattern with that “(D),” Gov. Mark Sanford being a recent case.
As usual Stewart drills down to the very essence of Fox with his Carlson expose (that’s about 50% of the Daily News piece, folks) and yet no one–not one of the posters above–can get beyond the numbers. The Rasmussen numbers are just more fodder for the kind of audience Carlson et al cater to. This country might benefit from a right-leaning news source that works on the basic assumption that its intended audience has functioning brains.
Big deal. A mistake. Besides, leftist weasel-scum like Obama deserve every pounding they get.
People: it’s funny. That is all.
Global Warming is a hoax
I think they need a separate category for “it is highly likely that it is at least somewhat likely.”
Onionesque, that.
Did Fox News falsify research to support their own theories of public opinion?
Answer at News at 10.
Time to think outside the Fox.
This is supposed to be some sort of proof that FoxNews falsifies data?
It’s a typo, as far as i can tell. It should be 39 instead of 59. Whether someone thinks that’s intentional is another matter.
Anyway, this only proves what one little number error can do. Kind of like all those errors the scientists must’ve ‘missed’ in their analysis.
I wish the pollsters would ask questions like:
Do you believe the six Bush tax hikes are the cause of the high unemployment?
Do you believe the Reagan 1981 tax hike cause the loss of 2.6 million jobs, and the six Reagan tax cuts in 1982 through 1986 created strong job growth?
Do you believe the Reagan balanced budget proved tax cuts generate increased tax revenue?
As the six Bush tax cuts resulted in rapid job creation, do you believe the liberals are reporting high unemployment rates just to make Bush look bad?
What’s even funnier is that afterwards Gretchen Carlson notes that the poll was taken before the leak of the Climategate e-mails. And her co-host chimes in saying that if the poll had been taken afterwards the results likely would have been closer to 100%.
The rest of the video is pretty good too.
Hi Blackadder. Did you realize that the poll you quote adds up to a whopping 120%??
Go ahead. Do the math
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