From Nigel Burke
Many New Scientist readers will have been surprised by the sharp
swing of public opinion in favour of animal testing when the pollsters prefaced
their question with a modest few words suggesting merely that scientists do
animal testing for a reason.
The opinion poll exercise tells us more about polls than opinions. When
approached with a simple polling question such as “Should X be allowed or
banned?”, people appear to interpret the question as “Do you like the idea of
X?”. We find from polls about hunting and shooting that a large majority will
say “yes” to a ban if asked an isolated question, but if the question is given
any kind of context or invites any kind of rational evaluation, the measured
support for a ban drops drastically. Poll research for the Countryside Alliance
has thrown up bizarre contradictions: most people agreed that “animals should
have the same rights as humans”, yet a majority also endorsed killing animals
for food.
Polling organisations such as MORI are free to produce poll results that are
statistically impeccable, but naive and distorted when it comes to finding out
how people really think. The polling industry exists to supply a media product,
not to supply research as understood by scientists.
nigel-burke@countryside-alliance.org
