The Louisiana Family Forum is upset that its state Board of Elementary and Secondary Schools voted overwhelmingly last week to approve new biology textbooks that don’t include creationist arguments against evolution. So the LFF posted a poll question on its website:
Do you support BESE’s decision today to approve a list of Biology textbooks with known false and inaccurate information?
And how do you think people responded to that absurdly biased (and inaccurate) question? Not as the LFF would have preferred. As of this morning, 9,452 people had responded: 96% saying that, yes, they do support the BESE’s decision. Oops.
Maybe you want to register your support for the BESE’s pro-science education decision. The poll question is on the upper left portion of the web page.
UPDATE: Well, shoot. The LFF has now changed the poll question. Now its:
Do you trust “Obama and the Lame-Duck congress” to protect the American tax payer in the pending tax debate?
Two votes so far, both yes.
“Do you support BESE’s decision today to approve a list of Biology textbooks with known false and inaccurate information?
They just left out the word “not” after “today”…
I love the poll results!
Uh, three votes now!
12 votes, including mine.
Although the poll results are hilarious, it is almost certainly because the poll was ‘pharyngulated” by PZ Myers’ horde.
PZ Myers runs the most popular science blog on the web (scienceblogs.com/pharyngula).
His (well founded) position is that internet polls are by definition inaccurate echo chambers, as they advertise on sites with more often than not polarizing opinions, and hence the vast majority of people frequenting those sites already agree with those opinions.
It’s like having a poll on the catholic league website asking visitors if they think the Pope bears any responsibility for the chronic rash of boy-buggering priests infecting society today. One can be fairly certain of the results of that poll.
But if PZ Myers’ find out about it, he will post an article and send his horde (literally thousands of loyal readers) to ‘pharyngulate’ the poll. He does it to make a point about the inanity of Internet polls, but the results, as in this case, are highly amusing.
13 all yes
14, all “Yes”. “Older Polls” link gives:
Access denied
You are not authorized to access this page.
I’m always saying you shouldn’t ask a question if you don’t want to know the answer.
I felt dirty just being on that site.
“Pharyngulated” is the progressive alternative to “freeping” a poll, which is done all the time by the wingnuts at FreeRepublic.