House of Eratosthenes

Mediaite is to be congratulated for putting up something that not only talks about the study but actually points to it. There is an abundance of spewing and intoning and condescending out there in blogger-land, in which people merely talk about the study around virtual mouthfuls of churlish chortling, basking in the afterglow of skimming through something that comports with their prejudices in such a satisfying way. But they don’t point to it.

This is not the intellectual behavior of people who meet my definition of “informed.”

I should add in the spirit of full disclosure I don’t have a dog in this hunt. This is the twenty-first century and responsible consumers of news don’t get their news from the teevee anymore. They take a more active role now — they put together queries about what they want to find out, who says what, what the opposition has to say about it, and then they form an opinion.

If I do this right, you’re about to find out how that is done and also why it is so important.

Daisy Duke But anyway, I don’t regard myself as a Fox News watcher. If I beat the Lady of the House home, I might turn on Hannity if there’s enough time to attend to a casual chore like hanging up my shirts from the drier, but not enough time for an episode of Dukes of Hazzard. Only in the spirit of, since these are interesting times in which we live, I don’t want to be completely cut-off from the outside world for an evening…and I can’t hit the news scrolls on the computer when I have a “One Big Ass Mistake, America” tee shirt in one hand and a hanger in the other.

So I have the channel memorized. But would I say Fox News is a significant contributor to my net information base? Not even close. If I’m misinformed about the issues, don’t go crying to Hannity about it.

Anyway, back to the study. By reading what the eager cheerleaders of the study do not want you to read — which is the work itself — you find that the “misinformed” assessment was formed by means of responses to carefully chosen questions. In other words, if a respondent refused or failed to reject a pre-selected and pre-defined canard, which apparently the authors of the study decided ahead of time was somehow relevant, the respondent was “misinformed.”

Even if I liked the questions that were asked — if I liked the canards that were pre-selected — I’d have to characterize this as a not terribly helpful way to go. As you’ll see below, the canards have it in common that, if true, they would make a certain consistent ideological position (progressive) look discredited and undesirable. The obvious problem with this, is that a respondent could reject all of them out of loyalty to this ideological position and come out of it looking like a rocket scientist.

Care to argue with me about it? Take a look.

P. 5. Most economists think stimulus legislation has saved or created only a few jobs, or has even caused job losses.

P. 6: Economists estimate that healthcare legislation will increase the deficit.

P. 7: The economy is still getting worse.

P. 8: Most scientists think climate change is not occurring.

P. 9: The TARP program began under President Obama.

P. 11: The bailout of General Motors and Chrysler occurred under President Obama and not under President Bush.

P. 12: There were no income tax cuts in the stimulus legislation.

P. 14: President Obama has either decreased troop levels in Afghanistan, or kept them the same.

P. 14: President Obama may not have been born in the United States.

In addition to these, there was one token question that went the other way, on page twelve:

In October an article on the website ThinkProgress.org launched the claim that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce was using large amounts of money raised from foreign sources to support Republican candidates. Most voters—60%–were aware that this charge about the Chamber of Commerce was not proven to be true. However, a substantial 31% did believe the claim that “the US Chamber of Commerce was spending large amounts of money it had raised from foreign sources to support Republican candidates and attack Democratic candidates” was proven to be true.

A token question is useful for keeping ankle-biters like me from making absolute statements that would otherwise be true: “All of the litmus tests in this study would be satisfied by an uninformed participant who just happens to lean left politically.” It helps to refudiate a claim like that — but, I note, it wouldn’t have much of an effect on the statistical outcome.

There seems to have been a prodigal expense of effort going into this study, and I don’t even want to know how many dollars. The research, from what I can tell, is all based on the survey responses to these chosen falsehoods. It just seems strange to me they weren’t chosen with quality in mind. If I were to commission such a study, there would be a great many more questions. Something approaching a hundred seems more reasonable.

I would sort them into three buckets: “The revelation of the truth makes the conservatives look good”; “the revelation of truth makes the liberals look good”; and “neutral.” Then I would fill these buckets so that the final ratio was something like two, two and six. I expect, as far as finding the canards to be debunked, the six-neutral would be the most difficult one to fill in terms of quota.

I note, too, that some of the questions asked by the World Public Opinion Dot Org are framed around “what the experts think.” So there is another obvious point to be made about the flaw in their research: It is inclined to bestow the title of “well informed” upon people who place great weight on what “experts” think, and then just slavishly mimic them. I suppose there is a certain fairness to that, along with a worthy fidelity to the intent of the study — you need to track down some information in order to find out what the so-called experts are thinking, so you can copy it — but it occurs to me. When we seek to establish and maintain an “informed” democratic republic of participating voters, this seems somewhat far-flung and distant from what we should be trying to build.

What good is information if you aren’t thinking independently about what it means?

Anyway, it is clear to me from reading this study that World Public Opinion and the University of Maryland are going to need some assistance coming up with some canards/litmus tests for the next study. It’s also clear to me such an abundant effort will be made at least one more time, prior to the elections of 2012 — of this, I have no doubt.

So following are my submissions for the next selection of falsehoods to be included in the next round.

1. The New Deal ended the Great Depression.
2. Science is about reaching a consensus.
3. After we invaded Iraq we learned the invasion was completely unjustified.
4. The First Amendment criminalizes the expression of religious belief in a public school or in any public place.
5. The Supreme Court has consistently held that life doesn’t begin until birth.
6. President Nixon started the Vietnam war.
7. The Pilgrims came to America so they wouldn’t have to pray or go to church.
8. The Constitution, through the Bill of Rights, grants certain rights to The People.
9. It also grants the Supreme Court the final say in whether a law passed by Congress is valid.
10. America was started so that all pressing issues of public importance could be decided democratically.
11. In the years after Ronald Reagan signed the tax cut in 1981, tax revenues fell.
12. Women in the work force, on average, make 70 cents to every dollar made by an equally qualified man.
13. On average, the rich inherit their wealth; they don’t earn it.
14. While serving as Governor of Texas, George W. Bush pardoned James Byrd’s killers.
15. ObamaCare has never done anything to create a “death panel,” this is a complete falsehood.
16. Al Gore never claimed to have created the Internet, this is another falsehood.
17. The Second Amendment is about hunting, and if you don’t hunt your food you have no use for it.
18. By renewing the Bush tax cuts across the board, Congress is giving money to the wealthiest Americans.
19. Equality is one of the founding, visionary ideals of America.
20. Diversity is another.
21. Blacks didn’t win the right to vote until the 1960’s.
22. Under Reagan, the CIA sold crack to inner-city youths to keep them criminalized and impoverished.
23. Karl Rove outed Valerie Plame and destroyed her career as a covert operative.
24. George Bush (the elder) persuaded the Iranians not to release the hostages until Reagan’s inauguration.
25. The Boy Scouts is a hate group.
26. Unemployment benefits stimulate the economy.
27. A fetus is not a life.
28. Under President Bush, gas prices went up as oil companies saw their biggest profit margins ever.
29. A progressive tax system imposes the highest proportional liability on the wealthiest Americans, which is as it should be.
30. Sarah Palin said, “I can see Russia from my house!”

At sometime or another, I have argued with liberals — usually on the innerwebs — who honestly believed one, some or most of these demonstrably false statements. I tripped them up easily; they were uninformed because they were misinformed. Handed a bowl of drivel and nonsense which they then gulped down uncritically, probably repeating it more than a few times before I smacked ’em upside the head over it. The balance of what remains, I have heard uttered by progressive politicians. They were seldom to never questioned about it.

So if the study is to serve the public interest by offering us cues as to where people might be going to become informed or misinformed, I would argue there is an urgency involved in framing the next study around falsehoods like the ones I have offered. Among the falsehoods they are already using, they could jettison some to make room. I would start with the ones that begin with “experts/economists/scientists say…” Because this, too, is not a pattern of behavior I would expect from an informed person — you turn on the teevee to watch a news anchor regurgitate to you whatever it is the experts say?

No, I think the study would be better served by using what I’ve offered. I wonder if that will have an effect on the result? Ya think it would?

I probably needn’t worry about that. World Public Opinion Dot Org is merely a label, a front for The Program on International Policy Attitudes. PIPA is bankrolled by, among other sponsors, the Tides Foundation.

So I’m not holding my breath for my offering of thirty questions to make it into the next round.

Cross-posted at Right Wing News and Washington Rebel.

You have reminded me of all the times I have answered the phone to be confronted with what turned out to be a “push” poll in which a premise or scenario was laid out to elicit a response that made sense, but only if you agreed with the false premise.

You’ve inspired me to create my own true/false questionnaire and post it.

Thanks.
- Moshe Ben-David | 12/18/2010 @ 09:26
Interesting.
I hadn’t heard about this, but yes, all polls / studies / whatever seem to be slanted to give the poller the data that they need to substantiate their point

But I did stumble across some interesting things about Fox the other day and put them in this article

http://keepamericaatwork.com/?p=11804

And for those like me who are really wondering who is manipulating the manipulators, you might want to take a look at this article I put together yesterday.

http://keepamericaatwork.com/?p=12020

Virgil
http://www.KeepAmericaAtWork.com
- vbierschwale | 12/18/2010 @ 09:40
I just remembered some other statements that could be used.

31. Saddam Hussein was never in possession of any weapons of mass destruction.
32. Only George W. Bush and people in his administration ever believed that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.
33. It is impossible for anyone but a white person to be racist.
34. The U.S. Constitution guarantees that anyone born on U.S. soil is automatically a citizen.
35. The U.S. Constitution means whatever the majority opinion of the U.S. Supreme Court says it means.
36. Housing, medical care, and a “living wage” are all human rights.
- Moshe Ben-David | 12/18/2010 @ 09:40
I tried to limit it to those falsehoods that could be blasted into oblivion by means of a single linked article, which could then be summarized in a very brief paragraph. That’s the way they do it in the study. Shooting for a “reasonable doubt” threshold here, asserting a truth that does not depend on the opponent’s point-of-view. Your 33 and 36 would then pose some problems, Moshe — they would detect respondents who are misguided, not necessarily misinformed — although there is some good stuff in the rest.

Regarding 35, I think an opponent could reasonably assert that from a legal point of view, the statement is true. But I have prevailed against some lefty lightweights (not convincing them, mind you, just beating ’em like a drum and they didn’t realize it) who based their arguments on some obligation private citizens seemed to have to form their opinions around what SCOTUS had decided, and were shocked to find themselves dealing with someone so audacious as to proffer that SCOTUS decided incorrectly. It was fun to watch. They didn’t know what to do, how to deal with it. Maybe 35 should deal with that in some way.
- mkfreeberg | 12/18/2010 @ 09:56
Excellent article, particularly the 30 questions. And thanks to readers for making it 35. For those of us independents like yourself who unfortunately dont have the facts at hand like the writer and therefore dont fare as well in discussions with liberals, would it be possible to have some links as to why these 35 questions are demonstrably false? I know this would be time consuming but it would go a long way to educating the readers, making your case compelling and contributing to better political discussions among the masses.
Many thanks
- chuckie | 12/18/2010 @ 11:30
For those of us independents like yourself who unfortunately dont have the facts at hand like the writer and therefore dont fare as well in discussions with liberals, would it be possible to have some links as to why these 35 questions are demonstrably false?

This is one of those things I put up with the intent of linking back to it later on, so I do intend to make a project out of it going forward. I cannot make a promise that it would be an exhaustive effort covering all thirty though. For a quick summary, I would point out it was Tina Fey who made a so-called “joke” out of something Sarah Palin said, to inject some weirdness into her statement that was not there before; the Bill of Rights merely recognizes rights we already have as dignified humans, and “grants” nothing; the power to declare legislation unconstitutional and void, is one the Supreme Court seized for itself in the Marbury vs. Madison decision; it is silly and delusional to think a tax cut “gives” anybody anything, especially when it’s a continuation of the tax rates that have been in place already; Plame’s identity turned out to be disclosed by Richard Armitage, to the chagrin and disappointment of dedicated lefties everywhere, many of whom reacted by simply ignoring this revelation.

I would recommend anyone who is particularly interested in the real truth of any one of the 35 or so, make a research project of their own. Including those I’ve covered with the one-liners above — unlike the typical smarmy lefty, I’m not going to insist or even suggest anyone take my word for anything. Google or Bing yer li’l heart out, it is a blessing to not have to live in the Age of Cronkite, and we should make the absolute most of it.
- mkfreeberg | 12/18/2010 @ 11:53
Excellent idea. This should be a group effort if others are interested. Perhaps a dedicated website to contain to the links as they get added maybe? Something to refer back to as needed.
- chuckie | 12/18/2010 @ 12:20
Sadly, I’m not sure a series of links would do much good. It couldn’t hurt, of course, but as the entire Barack Obama phenomenon has demonstrated, there are plenty of folks who won’t let petty things like facts and reason get in the way of their self-concept. These are the types of folks who would dislocate their own arms to better pat themselves on the back, and they’re everywhere.

For instance, I know honest-to-god college professors, with degrees in real subjects (i.e. ones that don’t end in “Studies”) who believe every single item on Morgan’s list. Yes, even “I can see Russia from my house!” (it’s “fake but accurate,” you see, and I’ve had honest-to-god profs defend that one in my presence as well). Even the best-written and -sourced article in the world isn’t going to break through the trenches of the entire media/educational apparatus….
- Severian | 12/19/2010 @ 06:09
Severian, the point of the links would not be to convert liberals but rather to provide rebuttal information for independents, conservatives or anyone looking to examine an issue in detail.
- chuckie | 12/19/2010 @ 15:50
This would be an excellent project to persue.

And may I say … excellent graphic. 😉
- philmon | 12/20/2010 @ 21:42
[…] Really Really Fast “Beyond Cool: Winter Solstice, Plus Lunar Eclipse on December 21″ On That Study That Says Fox Viewers Are Misinformed… Conservatives, Liberals, Christianity and Government NOW Talking About Hooters is Like Liberals […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 12/23/2010 @ 07:32

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Saturday, December 18th, 2010