"Call me prejudiced that way, but I just don't trust polls made by parties with an - ah - appreciable stake, shall we say, in the subject at hand."

Interesting. So it was the source of the poll that made you conclude that it was "a stunt".

"So, you can respond in (at least) two wholly different ways: You can respond as if you accept the Disco Inst.'s version of the story, in which case the "˜correct' answer is E, or you can reply as if you regard IDC as a ploy to circumvent a clear-cut SCOTUS decision, in which case the correct answer is G - none of the above - since the option "˜IDC is a politcal stunt to advance creationism' isn't there."

Yes, the poll allows people with different beliefs to reply in different ways. And since the purpose of the poll was to discover people's beliefs, how is that a problem?

"And if you answer G, then you're basically saying "˜the poll is flawed,' and providing a pretext for a dishonest pollster to scrap the thing without further comment."

Yes, a sufficiently fradulous way for ID supporters to act can always be imagined. However, why would this scenario be such a catastrophe? The ID supporter forgets his silly little poll, and everything continues as if it never happened.

"So from the perspective of someone doubting your honesty and integrity, it looks like a "˜heads, I win, tails, forget about it' situation. Needless to say, you don't want your friends to be used in that way. Hence the "˜activism.'"

Except that Elsberry actually advised people to give the reply that allegedly would allow me to "forget about it". Obviously, something's missing from your analysis.

"An aside: Since the poll is badly and fundamentally flawed,"

That's your subjective impression.

"what's all the ruckus about anyway? If your intentions were bona fide, then you wouldn't have been able to use the results anyway, Elsberry or no Elsberry."

How do you know? We don't know how the poll would have fallen out without the activism of Elsberry and his friends.

Krauze: "For example, consider this poll, highlighted by the NCSE. Shall we review the multiple ways in which those questions can be interpreted?"

JS: "Frankly, the only poll I'm interested in is the number of publications and citations in the peer-reviewed litterature over the past - say - five years."

Now, that can't be the case, as you're spending your time discussing this poll, rather than making your "citations in the peer-reviewed litterature" argument somewhere else. So, why are you reluctant to apply your criteria to the poll from NCSE?

"But, no, it would be a pointless exercise to point out flaws and ambiguities in the NCSE poll, since the fundamental honesty and intellectual integrity of the NCSE is well established."

Then why make claims about alleged ambiguity in my poll, when all that really matters is the source?

"You need more than 36 people to do statistics. As in far more than 36 people. Medical experiments use test and control groups a couple of thousand big. And they skirt the very edges of what can be reasonably called statistical evidence."

Yeah, because there's no difference between an informal poll to be "published" on a blog and the testing of medicine that will be available through pharmacies, right?

"A public retraction. Kudos. Your credibility is improving in my eyes (not hard, since it started out at rock bottom, but every little step counts)."

Another interesting statement. So, knowing absolutely nothing about me, except that I'm an ID supprter, you start out by assuming the worst.

- JS

Perhaps you can explain what relationship Krause has with any creationist organization.

- JS

Fallacy. The two are not mutually exclusive. I, for instance, first saw the poll on The Mad Biologist, and concluded that it was a stunt before seeing Elsberry's post. Call me prejudiced that way, but I just don't trust polls made by parties with an - ah - appreciable stake, shall we say, in the subject at hand.

And which different interpretations are those?

I'll concede that my comment was less than perfectly clear. What I meant to say is that the entire poll is ambiguious, because Intelligent Design Creationism is a front for YECism contrieved after YECism got slapped down in Edwards vs. Aguillard.

So, you can respond in (at least) two wholly different ways: You can respond as if you accept the Disco Inst.'s version of the story, in which case the 'correct' answer is E, or you can reply as if you regard IDC as a ploy to circumvent a clear-cut SCOTUS decision, in which case the correct answer is G - none of the above - since the option 'IDC is a politcal stunt to advance creationism' isn't there.

This is a problem similiar to - say - the problem you are faced with if you are asked about the relationship between Hamas and Israel. On the one hand, Hamas holds an ideological position that Israel should be wiped from the map, but on the other hand, Hamas is a somewhat reasonable and pragmatic bunch, so in reality they accept that Israel is there to stay.

This is not a problem if the survey is carried out with the intent to gain information. Given a sufficiently large sample (!), such problems will emerge as clear patterns in the answers. But if the pollster is less than fully honest, that ambiguity can be manipulated.

If you answer E, because that's what the people pushing IDC says it is, then a dishonest pollster could take the result and say "see, not even the other side thinks that we're YECs," the same way a dishonest politician can (and does) distort the fact that Hamas formally has the destruction of Israel on its political agenda, despite the fact that they know full well that it's not gonna happen.

And if you answer G, then you're basically saying 'the poll is flawed,' and providing a pretext for a dishonest pollster to scrap the thing without further comment. So from the perspective of someone doubting your honesty and integrity, it looks like a 'heads, I win, tails, forget about it' situation. Needless to say, you don't want your friends to be used in that way. Hence the 'activism.'

An aside: Since the poll is badly and fundamentally flawed, what's all the ruckus about anyway? If your intentions were bona fide, then you wouldn't have been able to use the results anyway, Elsberry or no Elsberry.

Another aside: If you want to conduct a poll about IDC in the future, be careful to split every question into two parts: What the IDC advocates claim IDC is, and what IDC actually is. Whether or not the IDC advocates are actually lying, the distinct impression on our side of the fence is that they do…

For example, consider this poll, highlighted by the NCSE. Shall we review the multiple ways in which those questions can be interpreted?

Frankly, the only poll I'm interested in is the number of publications and citations in the peer-reviewed litterature over the past - say - five years.

But, no, it would be a pointless exercise to point out flaws and ambiguities in the NCSE poll, since the fundamental honesty and intellectual integrity of the NCSE is well established.

Now, if you can point out a case of quote-mining or misrepresentation of their results, I might reevaluate my assessment of the NCSE's honesty, in which case questioning their poll techniques might be relevant. But the fundamental difference is that their honesty is established, whereas the jury is still out on the honesty of Telic Thoughts.

Or, e-mail a bunch of people, ask them what they think, and then calculate some percentages and even do some statistics

Statistics being a pet pee-we of mine, I'll comment on this too. You need more than 36 people to do statistics. As in far more than 36 people. Medical experiments use test and control groups a couple of thousand big. And they skirt the very edges of what can be reasonably called statistical evidence.

The reason I'm picky about statistics is that there's so much bad statistics floating around in society, and that ignorant and/or less than honest politicians routinely conflate good and bad statistics - playing on the fact that 95 % of the population is effectively mathematically illiterate.

In short, it pisses me off (actually I'm more pissed off at the reporters who ought to do the math themselves rather than accept at face value what they're told, but that's another story entirely). So I vent steam whenever I see bad numbers…

However, I have since come to regret the "they didn't like the scientific method to be applied to themselves". I think JS' suggestion is closer to the truth - Elsberry was worried about giving a "creationist" some data he might quote-mine. So I've changed that part of my post.

A public retraction. Kudos. Your credibility is improving in my eyes (not hard, since it started out at rock bottom, but every little step counts). And no, I'm not being sarcastic. I take as much fun as the next guy in pointing and laughing when you screw up, so it's only fair that I commend when you do something right.

That's weird. I checked it after I edited it, and it looked fine.

Oh, and Matthew: I regard trackbacks from places like culturekitchen as batches of honor.

"Didn't you say your poll was informal? If it was scientific, could you please explain the methodology you are using?"

Considering that science is just a formalized way of doing what we normally do to make sense of the world, we actually use "the scientific method" in many circumstances that fail to qualify as science.

In this case, the scientific method is simply that of performing experiments, gathering data, and drawing conclusions from ones observations. Or, e-mail a bunch of people, ask them what they think, and then calculate some percentages and even do some statistics (sadly, I never got to those last points).

However, I have since come to regret the "they didn't like the scientific method to be applied to themselves". I think JS' suggestion is closer to the truth - Elsberry was worried about giving a "creationist" some data he might quote-mine. So I've changed that part of my post.