FOX NEWS ... OUR NATION'S VILLAGE IDIOT

In spite of support for President Obama's health care proposals from the American Medical Association, calls for a single-payer system from Physicians for a National Health Program, and a recent survey by the Mount Sinai School of Medicine that found overwhelming support (73%) for health care reform and/or the Public Option, FOX News decided to push a shabbily conducted health care poll from a less than reputable firm.

The following is from Media Matters ...

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Fox runs wild with "not scientific" IBD pollSeveral Fox News media figures highlighted a recent Investor's Business Daily/TIPP poll which found that "[t]wo of every three practicing physicians oppose the medical overhaul plan under consideration in Washington, and hundreds of thousands would think about shutting down their practices or retiring early if it were adopted."

However, according to statistician Nate Silver, the poll is "simply not credible," and Fox News itself acknowledged that the poll is "not scientific."



(Click here if video not available on your screen.)


Silver, Fox News undermine IBD/TIPP poll's credibilityNate Silver: Poll is "simply not credible." In a September 16 post to his blog FiveThirtyEight.com, Silver listed five reasons why the IBD poll should be "completely ignore[d]":

1. The survey was conducted by mail, which is unusual. The only other mail-based poll that I'm aware of is that conducted by the Columbus Dispatch, which was associated with an average error of about 7 percentage points -- the highest of any pollster that we tested.

2. At least one of the questions is blatantly biased: "Do you believe the government can cover 47 million more people and it will cost less money and the quality of care will be better?". Holy run-on-sentence, Batman? A pollster who asks a question like this one does not intend on being objective.

3. As we learned during the Presidntial campaign -- when, among other things, they had John McCain winning the youth vote 74-22 -- the IBD/TIPP polling operation has literally no idea what they're doing. I mean, literally none. For example, I don't trust IBD/TIPP to have competently selected anything resembling a random panel, which is harder to do than you'd think.

4. They say, somewhat ambiguously: "Responses are still coming in." This is also highly unorthodox. Professional pollsters generally do not report results before the survey period is compete.

5. There is virtually no disclosure about methodology. For example, IBD doesn't bother to define the term "practicing physician", which could mean almost anything. Nor do they explain how their randomization procedure worked, provide the entire question battery, or anything like that.

Silver added: "There are pollsters out there that have an agenda but are highly competent, and there are pollsters that are nonpartisan but not particularly skilled. Rarely, however, do you find the whole package: that special pollster which is both biased and inept. IBD/TIPP is one of the few exceptions."

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- Mark