Bogus polls from Nature
Soon after Twitter polls were introduced, Al-Jazeera News used one to poll its followers about US intervention in Syria. Fortunately, it seems to have been a failed experiment (the poll, that is).
Now, Nature News is doing it:
Twitter polls can work as jokes and commentary, and they might work for gathering opinions from your friends. They shouldn’t be allowed to masquerade as data collection.
Thomas Lumley (@tslumley) is Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Auckland. His research interests include semiparametric models, survey sampling, statistical computing, foundations of statistics, and whatever methodological problems his medical collaborators come up with. He also blogs at Biased and Inefficient See all posts by Thomas Lumley »
Completely agree. I think the polls are great for engaging with people on twitter, for seeing whether people are interested in a topic for creating conversation. But there is zero scientific reliability or validity in them. Run a poll, have a bit of fun, but if you need research then run some real research.
8 years ago