7 out of 10 Americans believe the health care law is unconstitutional.
hmm.
7 out of 10 Americans believe the health care law is unconstitutional.
This quote was in an article on Morning Edition as I was driving in to work this morning. The first thing that came to my mind when I heard this was “are 7 out of 10 Americans remotely qualified to say if a law is unconstitutional?” Could 7 out of 10 Americans name the relevant sections of the Constitution which are being used to argue this case? (Interstate Commerce and Congress’ Taxing Authority to name some of the main ones.) I am quite certainly more versed on Constitutionality than the average bear, I have read quite a bit about the Court in general, I have listened to the Oral Arguments in the case, and I don’t think I am qualified to answer the question of the Constitutionality of that or any other law.
In the same article, they also said:
7 out of 10 Americans are opposed to the individual mandate.
Ok, there we go, that is a polling question I can understand and support the data on. It is a question where the people answering it have the basis to share their feelings.
I don’t understand how a news or polling organization can reasonably ask a question for which the people answering the question are unqualified to even understand the topic on which the question is based?
8 out of 10 Americans believe that the Clique Problem can be shown to be NP Complete by reducing it to Boolean Satisfiability Problem.
People would laugh at any survey that shared this “fact.” (Or at least I would hope they would.) It isn’t that the assertion isn’t correct (it is), it is just that it is a question that is meaningless to 99% of people out there. This is not meant to be an insult to 99% of people, just that we should not be presenting statistics on questions that people have no reasonable basis for knowing the answer.
Please stick to questions on polls where people have a reasonably good chance of being able to be informed. It is probably impolite to say, but if you are not informed about a topic, your opinion really does not make much sense, because you have no basis to form an opinion.
2 Comments
Over used though it may be, “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.”
I find myself dismissing quotes of “98% of people polled said…” because it is so rare that I find a meaningful study. I try to make myself read into the actual nature of the study, but being disappointed time after time weakens my will to do so.
Either the target group is set in such a way that the results are skewed, or the question is phrased in leading manner, or it is a topic about which popular consensus is irrelevant.
There is too much FUD in the world.
Pollsters (and pundits) over-use the term “believe”. I’d argue the second poll question is better, not only because it asks for an opinion people have a basis to answer, but also because it measures opposition vs. belief.
Your 3rd example points to this as well. My “belief” about the Clique Problem is irrelevant, whether or not I have a background in the subject. I may accept it or try to refute it (reject it) based on say a flaw in the reduction (not that there is one, but that’s how I might attempt a refutation). But it isn’t a system of belief.
Likewise Global Warming or Wikipedia. Educated folk may debate the proportion of warming from anthropogenic causes. Others may debate the long-term accuracy and sustainability of a community-edited encyclopedia. Debate is good. But in neither case should it be called (or become) a belief system.
As a person of faith, I believe there is a place for belief :) But to the pollsters and pundits: “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”