From: Chuck.Lavazzi@bbs.oit.unc.edu (Chuck Lavazzi)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc
Subject: Re: More Nilges obfuscation (was:Re: Hate Speech Okay, says the Supreme Court)
Date: 22 Jul 92 02:18:17 GMT
Organization: Extended Bulletin Board Service

In article <1992Jul21.135455.10286@Princeton.EDU> egnilges@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Ed Nilges) writes:
>In article <1992Jul20.043442.12608@samba.oit.unc.edu> Chuck.Lavazzi@bbs.oit.unc.edu (Chuck Lavazzi) writes:
>>In article <1992Jul18.223150.20604@Princeton.EDU> egnilges@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Ed Nilges) writes:
[Details of flawed polls conducted in 1936 and 1948 deleted; while I never
denied they were flawed, I claimed that the methodology used was primitive and
is unlikely to be seen in contemporary polls.  Ed says I have the specific
nature of the flaws wrong]
>
>
>If your going to steal my facts, mate, get them right.  The Literary
>digest fiasco was in '36; the Trib fiasco in '48.  Beginning with the
>media-sponsored defeat of Stevenson in '52, the Republicans have used
>"scientific" (unexplained, Eleusinian) polls and TeeVee to Manufacture
>Consent.
	I did not "steal your facts", Ed.  I don't have the reference handy,
so I'm willing to concede that I had the specifics of what was wrong with
the '48 claims of a Dewey victory wrong.  It's still irrelevant to your claims
that contemmporary polling organizations deliberately distort their results
to benefit Republicans or that their methods are flawed in some fundamental
way; a claim which you have *yet* to back up with anything other than 
sarcasm and blatant assertions.
>
>>>
>>	Really?  Better not get on an airplane any time soon then, Ed.  Since
>>early flight technology failed, obviously we should junk airplanes.  Are you
>>seriously claiming that the first time something doesn't work we shouldn't
>>try to fix it?  Or is this just another attempt to deflect rational argument
>>with cheap sarcasm?
>
>No, we don't junk airplanes.  But we do have a National Transportation
>Safety Board.  We'd react to a National Journalistic Accuracy Board with
>horror, and rightfully so.  But the fact that we cannot regulate speech
>in the way we can regulated transportation should make us more, rather
>than less, alert, to the misuses of media.  When I board United Airlines
>for San Francisco, I am confident that the company has done a good job
>partly because it is overseen by tough bureaucrats.  When I crack open
>my inflight copy of Business Week, however, I read critically because
>business week, I know, has a corporatist agenda.
	I see I left out another weapon in your arsenal: the out-of-context
quote.  My response (above) was a response to your claim that "any technology
that doesn't work should be junked" (or words to that effect).   I was 
pointing out the absurdity of that attitude. Your response seems to have
little to do with the initial topic.
>
>
[...]

>In '36 and '48 the media was not as good at hiding its polling methods
>as it is now.  These methods are trade secrets and protected.  It is
>therefore impossible to present them, and that's part of the problem.
>But the main problem is very obvious and simple.  Polls are not secret
>ballots.  This appeal to "science" and "progress" obscures the fact that
>the "science" of a pollster is completely unavailable to the citizen,
>who has trouble with his VCR, let alone the complex models used by the
>pollsters.
>
	First of all, the major polling organizations today are not "media"
organizations at all but rather survey research firms such as Louis Harris,
Gallup, and National Opinion Research Center.  It has ben a while since I
worked in this area, but I don't recall much of anything that came out of
NORC as being "secret".  Second, I never claimed polls *were* secret ballots.
Third, the fact that the principles of inferential statistics are "completely
unavailable to the citizen" (not accurate, by the way; stistics texts are
hardly State Secrets) hardly makes them invalid or suspect.  The principles
of data communications are hardly more accessible.  Does that make them
suspect?

>>
>>>
>>	Maybe you do, but I don't.  And polls these days routinely report
>>the error margins ("confidence intervals") in their results.  The assumptions
>>used are not mysterious trade secrets at all; any statistician is familiar
>
>Not all citizens are statisticians, nor should the expected to be.  It's
>not an especially reputable occupation (you have read, I trust, "How to
>Lie with Statistics.")
>
	I didn't say they should.  That's why it's a Good Thing to report
confidence intervals.  And yes, Ed, I *know* that statictics can be 
deliberately misinterpreted, usually by politicians, activists, or others
with an axe to grind and a disregard for the truth.  So what?  The
disreputable behavior is that of the person misrepresenting the data, not the
original researcher.

>>with them.  Or are you claiming that all the polling organizations are involved in
>>some vast conspiracy ot hide THE Truth from the American public?
>>
>
>(Sigh) not a conscious conspiracy.  It's simply in the media's interest
>to push political debate towards the center, corporatist right, and away
>both from the left-liberal end AND from the nativist, Pat Buchanan
>right.

	Let me see if I've got this straight.  It's *not* a conspiracy, it's
just that all the American media organizations are trying to manipulate
political debate?  How is this different from a conspiracy?  Or is it just a
coincidence that they're all supposedly doing the same thing?
	(Note that I have dropped alt.censorship from this thread; it no
longer has any relevance there.)
Chuck
No .sig, no frills, no foolin'


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