The Language Log post also emphasizes that mass media reports of such surveys sometimes quote numbers completely different from the actual survey results, presumably to increase the value of the news story. So:
In the passage quoted above, Robin Young states the survey result incorrectly — actually, 73% of respondents, not 28%, were able to name one of the constitutional freedoms – and she spins it in a doubtful direction to boot, because only 65% were able to name one of the Simpsons characters.
In the cited New York Times article, Diane Ravitch is referring to the 2010 NAEP 12th grade U.S. History test, in which 82%, not 2%, of 12th graders correctly identified Brown v. Board of Education.
In addition to discounting “public ignorance” surveys, we should discount surveys and other factual information reported through such media.
This Language Log post gives a much better idea of what’s going on. 28% was the number for “more than one” of the constitutional freedoms, which was later commonly misquoted as “one or more”. And, of course, there’s the matter of picking out a point of the distribution which is the most striking.
In other words: nobody is actually lying about the survey results. Instead, the falsehood is distributed along the chain: the press release states the results in a deliberately misleading way, and subsequent reports on it simply aren’t careful to avoid being misled.
The post you linked to argues that the poll and its original press release were deliberately designed to spin results and encourage misunderstanding, and that the error in subsequent reports was a deliberate goal on the part of the pollsters.
Deliberate spinning of statistics isn’t different from lying in method or result; the only difference is that they cover themselves by making sure their words are literally true.
Lying and deliberately misleading aren’t quite the same thing, although they have the same effect; I would expect the press to do the latter but not the former. So when you implied that the mass media reports did lie, I was confused and decided to dig further.
One practical difference is that, if lying is considered bad but things-close-to-lying aren’t, it requires a tertiary source to completely replace the truth by a lie.
They’re the same thing consequentially, but different under deontological and virtue ethics, so there’s a signalling convention that one is better than the other.
The Language Log post also emphasizes that mass media reports of such surveys sometimes quote numbers completely different from the actual survey results, presumably to increase the value of the news story. So:
In addition to discounting “public ignorance” surveys, we should discount surveys and other factual information reported through such media.
This Language Log post gives a much better idea of what’s going on. 28% was the number for “more than one” of the constitutional freedoms, which was later commonly misquoted as “one or more”. And, of course, there’s the matter of picking out a point of the distribution which is the most striking.
In other words: nobody is actually lying about the survey results. Instead, the falsehood is distributed along the chain: the press release states the results in a deliberately misleading way, and subsequent reports on it simply aren’t careful to avoid being misled.
The post you linked to argues that the poll and its original press release were deliberately designed to spin results and encourage misunderstanding, and that the error in subsequent reports was a deliberate goal on the part of the pollsters.
Deliberate spinning of statistics isn’t different from lying in method or result; the only difference is that they cover themselves by making sure their words are literally true.
Lying and deliberately misleading aren’t quite the same thing, although they have the same effect; I would expect the press to do the latter but not the former. So when you implied that the mass media reports did lie, I was confused and decided to dig further.
One practical difference is that, if lying is considered bad but things-close-to-lying aren’t, it requires a tertiary source to completely replace the truth by a lie.
They’re the same thing consequentially, but different under deontological and virtue ethics, so there’s a signalling convention that one is better than the other.