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From: Your Name <YourName@YourISP.com>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.drwho
Subject: Re: Ian Levine's Doctor Who Group Poll on the Timeless Child...
Date: Fri, 29 Nov 2024 15:46:45 +1300
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On 2024-11-28 14:09:53 +0000, Blueshirt said:
> The Doctor wrote:
>> In article <vi865m$6ml7$1@dont-email.me>,
>> Mike McKeown  <mike@xenocyte.com> wrote:
>>> 
>>> Personally I think it's telling that Dave went to one of the
>>> most old fashioned groups out there - fans of Ian Levine and
>>> his endless quest to recreate the missing episodes - with
>>> mixed results - and even so his little poll only earned 60%
>>> favour.
>> 
>> That is no small feat.
> 
> You join a group on Facebook because you agree with the
> sentiments behind the group, so 60% of the people on that group
> agreeing with the person who runs that group is not a
> statistical miracle! It is perfectly normal.
> 
> I accept that it is a valid opinion among some Doctor Who fans,
> but trying to pass it off as some large-scale expression of
> fandom's wishes when it is only 512 people on a niche Facebook
> group is laughable.
> 
> It would be like us running a poll here on RADW among the
> twenty-five people and claiming that the result was
> representative of all Doctor Who fans.

That's *exactly* how most polls and surveys are usually done. The fools 
running the polls / surveys interview a tiny number of people and then 
claim the result is true for everyone. Often the poll / survey is also 
run badly (leading questions, ignoring factors the organisers don't 
like, etc.) and the results have been statistically manipulated to 
"prove" whatever the organiser wants it to prove.

Then, thanks to the misuse and general misunderstanding of how 
statistics works, the general public tend to blindly believe whatever 
is presented to them is actually true for everyone.

When it comes to medical studies, such bad survey techniques and bad 
reporting can be highly dangerous.