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It took me a ridiculously long time to even parse this question. "What fraction of women assaulted by a nominee for Supreme Court in high school..." I got to

It took me a ridiculously long time to even parse this question. "What fraction of women assaulted by a nominee for Supreme Court in high school..." I got to this bit and thought, "How many women are assaulted by a nominee for Supreme Court in high school? It can't be that many. Is it even reasonable to ask for a fraction? Is it meaningful?" I mean it's ludicrous to put up a "<1%" option as it implies that there were more than 100 women assaulted by a nominee for the Supreme Court in high school. Is that option justifiable? I find it really interesting that 65% of the respondents selected it, because it implies to me that they didn't understand the question. And then "would wait to publicly accuse him not just [after?] 30 yrs" So I thought, "How many nominees for Supreme Court are in high school? If I'm going to publicly accuse a nominee for Supreme Court for assaulting me in high school (assuming we were both in high school at the time), don't I have to wait 30 years? Otherwise I'll never know they were a nominee for the Supreme Court." -- which is a weird way of thinking about it. This word "wait" is particularly problematic. You can't know a priori that the attacker will be a nominee for the Supreme Court, so you can't really wait to accuse them on that basis. The best you can really say is "After not accusing their attacker for 30 years, would they accuse them after they were nominated to the supreme court?" (which might be an interesting question to ask) The last part "but after Congress hearings & just before Congress vote" didn't make grammatical sense to me. Granted I know nothing about the original context of the question, but presumably the hearing and vote are related to the appointment of the nominee. So I suppose the question the author wanted to ask is, would the accuser wait until after the hearings, but before the vote? However, this is really compressing the options. There are really 5 potential times to accuse the attacker: some time after the attack but before the nomination, between the nomination and the vote, after the vote, and never. Surely a much better question to ask would be "Which of these potential timings seems more likely to occur to you". This question is so badly written that I have a really hard time believing that it was written by someone who makes their living doing statistical analysis about people's perceptions. I've read the author's comment on it, but if they are defending this question (and I'm not 100% sure that they are), then I don't really think I need to look at their larger corpus. I think I can happily conclude that if they are not just trying to be a shit disturber then they are incredibly incompetent. I'm not sure which of the two labels they would rather be stuck with.

hjek 8y ago
> This word "wait" is particularly problematic. You can't know a priori that the attacker will be a nominee for the Supreme Court, so you can't really wait to accuse them on that basis. Great analysis of (the absurdity of) that poll question. I was just commenting that it is possible for a question to be biased, so to I really appreciate this detailed breakdown of it, particularly of that seemingly innocuous word "wait".
belorn 8y ago
After reading the author's comment on it I see it as a failure in making the question relevant to the problem they want to investigate, which was "Does the timing of the accusation seem suspicious?". I would have phrased the question more like: "How many fewer reports of assault would be filled if nominated political candidates would be protected from accusations in media during the limited period of an election? 0, 0.1%, 1%?" Expanding questions could then follow up to identify how the democratic process would benefit or suffer from having candidates be accused or accuse each other of illegal behavior, and if the public would find it informative or disinformative to read about it in the media. Further exploration could ask if it would be relevant whether the case ends up in the legal system after the election, or if it is enough that an accusation exists to make it relevant in the election process. Those question would have been interesting to see, both after the 2016 election and the Kavanaugh nomination.
jccalhoun 8y ago
From the blog post I read and his about me, the author seems to regularly write in an obtuse style. It reminds me of college freshmen who use long and obscure words instead of common ones because they think it makes them sound smart.

hjek 8y ago

> This word "wait" is particularly problematic. You can't know a priori that the attacker will be a nominee for the Supreme Court, so you can't really wait to accuse them on that basis. Great analysis of (the absurdity of) that poll question. I was just commenting that it is possible for a question to be biased, so to I really appreciate this detailed breakdown of it, particularly of that seemingly innocuous word "wait".

belorn 8y ago

After reading the author's comment on it I see it as a failure in making the question relevant to the problem they want to investigate, which was "Does the timing of the accusation seem suspicious?". I would have phrased the question more like: "How many fewer reports of assault would be filled if nominated political candidates would be protected from accusations in media during the limited period of an election? 0, 0.1%, 1%?" Expanding questions could then follow up to identify how the democratic process would benefit or suffer from having candidates be accused or accuse each other of illegal behavior, and if the public would find it informative or disinformative to read about it in the media. Further exploration could ask if it would be relevant whether the case ends up in the legal system after the election, or if it is enough that an accusation exists to make it relevant in the election process. Those question would have been interesting to see, both after the 2016 election and the Kavanaugh nomination.

jccalhoun 8y ago

From the blog post I read and his about me, the author seems to regularly write in an obtuse style. It reminds me of college freshmen who use long and obscure words instead of common ones because they think it makes them sound smart.