Group Behind Biased Online Alcohol Survey Drunk On Misinformation
from the we-have-a-nice-bottle-of-bs-'87 dept
Last week, we reported on a survey that showed very few kids were ordering booze online. The survey was backed by a trade group with an obvious interest in getting online alcohol sales banned again, and pretty completely undermined their claims that sites selling booze were significantly contributing to the drunken delinquency of America's youth -- but that didn't stop the group behind the survey from claiming otherwise, and plenty of news outlets took the bait. Now, the Wall Street Journal's numbers guy, Carl Bialik, has taken on the survey in his weekly column that examines statistics in the news, poking some huge holes in the surveys and the conclusions the group drew from it: the sample wasn't particularly representative of all teens, and the group focused on a stat about kids who said they knew somebody that had bought alcohol online, then extrapolated their claim of "millions" of kids being online boozehounds. The company that was hired to administer the survey even admits that the claims made by the group that paid for it really can't be made from the data they collected, but the trade group issued their overblown, truth-bending, apocalyptic press release anyway. Who needs push polls when you can just do any old survey, ignore the results and make wild claims based on your bias and predetermined outcome?Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
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Push polls
Who needs push polls when you can just do any old survey, ignore the results and make wild claims based on your bias and predetermined outcome?
Why the politians of course. How else will they know what hot button issue needs to be addressed for the sake of the children. How dare you not think of the children.
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Fetal Alcohol Syndrome
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Re: Fetal Alcohol Syndrome
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Re: Fetal Alcohol Syndrome
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Made up stats
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Amen Ric
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Re: Amen Ric
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Re: Re: Amen Ric
If you can even point to any, I'm pretty sure it will be a very, very rare occurence.
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leave it to the cheeseheads
it's 5 o'clock somewhere, and i feel like a beer....
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WI = Alcoholics
This policy teaches kids how to drink responsibly? Not quite. Cause in WI, when you walk into a bar, there's not a whole lot of "responsible" drinking going on. So, why does WI have so many alcoholics? Cause we're all depressed white trash hicks who have nothing else to do.
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Its amazing...
Its completely sickening, the amount of uptight a-holes that exist when it comes to things like alcohol or whom consenting adults want to sleep with or marry.
For christs sake get off the cross, someone needs the wood already.
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Free 2 Cents that No One Wants
I love TD, /., and Wired blogs man. I scan them using GoogleIG just to see what sensationalistic journalists have to say - and what mainstream America has to say back. It's not pretty - on either side. I'm moving to Australia.
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