Sixteen percent? That's alarmingly high. I assumed it was a few hundred people at most who just had a very large internet presence.
And yet, a survey conducted last spring found that a solid 16 percent of Americans aren’t sure of the Earth’s shape—with flat-Earth support running highest among millennials and those with lower incomes.
Sixteen percent? That's alarmingly high. I assumed it was a few hundred people at most who just had a very large internet presence.
Does anyone have any more information on the actual survey? Link? Sample size? Anything? Always a bit suspect when I see statistics in an article that doesn't link to the actual results or info...
Does anyone have any more information on the actual survey? Link? Sample size? Anything?
Always a bit suspect when I see statistics in an article that doesn't link to the actual results or info from the survey.
Literally doesn't mean a thing if I don't know the number of total people surveyed, actual questions asked, demographics, etc.
Like if 25 people were surveyed that's only 4 flat earthers.
Seems to have been this poll done by YouGov last April. 8215 participants, with 84% of the total responding to "Do you believe that the world is round or flat?" with "I have always believed the...
Seems to have been this poll done by YouGov last April. 8215 participants, with 84% of the total responding to "Do you believe that the world is round or flat?" with "I have always believed the world is round", the other 16% is spread across the other 4 options.
online surveys are sometimes [1] less reliable than calling people, yes, but this article is... pretty bad at demonstrating that in literally any way, for a couple of reasons. it tries to use the...
As always though, data that comes from online surveys is extremely questionable.
online surveys are sometimes [1] less reliable than calling people, yes, but this article is... pretty bad at demonstrating that in literally any way, for a couple of reasons.
it tries to use the 2016 election as an example of why online polling is bad:
When overall consumer sentiment rose steadily during US president Barack Obama’s second term, we just believed that all Americans were giddy over the economy and that, surely, we were hurtling toward an easy win for Hillary Clinton in 2016. Hidden underneath those small sample-size numbers, however, were subsets of the population who didn’t share that mainstream happiness and optimism. And it only took 26% of the eligible voting population to leave the rest of the country (and world) dumbfounded, even to this day.
but the 2016 election is actually an awful example of online polling (and polling in general) being bad. the polling in 2016 was more accurate than average nationally and about average at the state level (in addition to being slightly more accurate nationally than in 2012); and, while online polling both did quite poorly relative to their performance in 2012 and their live-caller counterparts in 2016, a lot of that is because of the two experimental methodology online pollsters in surveymonkey and google surveys. the two standard online pollsters, yougov and lucid, did quite well. yougov in fact actually performed second best in accurately polling the 2018 midterms, ahead of every other pollster besides cygnal, and including the NYT/Siena College collaboration project which was about as transparent in its live-caller methodology as any polling project ever could be.
for another thing, almost all polls managed to track with the result within their margin of error anyways (and also close to the final result). very few pollsters--even online ones--suffered a polling miss out of the ordinary that year at the national level. it just happens that, in the US, the popular vote does not decide the president, which is something that polling does not reflect. i have no idea what the "small sample-size numbers" they're looking at are there either, because most online polls are considerably larger than traditional polling because they're cheaper and less constrained by response rates.
(oh, and their very brief analysis here sucks--but that's a whole different issue, lol)
their citation for this broad claim:
Online panels don’t accurately represent the population: They represent the portion of people with the most spare time. The well-documented shortcomings of recent political polls are a good example of this.
doesn't back up their point. for one thing, pollsters weight for representation (with varying degrees of accuracy), but for another thing the actual citation is from an article written the day before the 2016 election--which again, the pollsters largely nailed--and uses a bunch of polls as examples that used traditional live-calling, not online outreach. this one that the article talks about that was so volatile, for example?
In the first iteration of the ABC/Post poll, conducted Oct. 20-23, Clinton led by a commanding 12-point margin, 50 percent to 38 percent. But in the following four-day rolling sample, conducted Oct. 24-27, the race had changed drastically: Clinton led Trump only by 2 points, 47 percent to 45 percent. That’s where the race stood Thursday — Clinton at 49 percent and Trump at 47 percent. At one point earlier in the week, Trump had a 1-point advantage for a day.
that was a traditional, live-caller poll, not an online one. the same is true, actually of literally every poll talked about in that article. i have no idea why the fuck they even cited it, because it entirely contradicts the point they're trying to make.
this criticism:
And guess what. Most of those people don’t look like you, me, or the rest of the average population. But the problem isn’t just with demographics. (Good statisticians can adjust for that.) The thornier problems are “psychographic” ones, meaning the ones that describe our personalities, values, opinions, attitudes, and interests. For example, our own data tells us that hyper-survey-takers are more brand-aware, coupon-using, and media-obsessed than the average US citizen, among other things. Those kinds of biases are nearly impossible to fix statistically.
is literally useless. you can levy the same argument against live-caller, traditional polling (because who the fuck answers a call seeking to poll you about something? probably not most people.), weighting exists, and in any case this almost certainly has no bearing on the statistical significance of any polling. [2]
this point:
Could that panel study provide some directional insight as to what the American public thinks? Sure. Is it the unassailable truth? Certainly not.
is basically a strawman, because there are no serious pollsters out there who are about to tell you their truth is unassailable. besides the fact that the lot of them share their methodology, margins of error, sample sizes, etc. to be publicly scrutinized, you're probably not going to find any pollster saying their polling is the whole, absolute, unquestionable truth--hell, most of them don't even have analysis of any kind in their poll releases about what their findings mean, they just read out the findings of their polling, because that's their job.
there's probably some other stuff i'm missing in there, but i think you get my memo and i'm tired of tracking down sources to dispute this mildly uninteresting point. there are definitely many valid reservations about online polling--but that article sucks at explaining them in pretty much every way possible or at actually presenting good points for why online polling can be questionable.
[1] by generally, i mean "this is entirely reliant on where you live" in a lot of cases to begin with. a lot of french electoral polls are conducted online for example and they've nailed the last few elections pretty well.
[2] and if it did, pollsters would actually try to do something about it, presumably? they're not stupid, lol.
People who believe that scientists are wrong about the Earth being 4.5 billion years old because the Bible says it's 6,000 years old are more likely to also not believe scientists saying that the...
People who believe that scientists are wrong about the Earth being 4.5 billion years old because the Bible says it's 6,000 years old are more likely to also not believe scientists saying that the Earth is round.
I've never met anyone who legitimately believed in flat Earth, let alone a christian who did, but I can sort of see connection. Extremist Christians and creationists are highly skeptical of...
I've never met anyone who legitimately believed in flat Earth, let alone a christian who did, but I can sort of see connection.
Extremist Christians and creationists are highly skeptical of science, often picking and choosing what they believe, and categorically denying science when it even slightly butts with their own beliefs. Quite frequently they aren't interested in a middle ground, or some compromise between their own truth and science; science is WRONG and only their truth has it figured out. It's very much like a cult in that respect.
So I could easily see how someone who already rejects the science of Earth's age, formation, geologic history and the trustworthiness of scientists in general could fall for flat Earth bogus.
To me it looks like the whole Flat Earth movement has nothing to do with finding the "truth". It's more about being part of some "secret" club or cult.
To me it looks like the whole Flat Earth movement has nothing to do with finding the "truth". It's more about being part of some "secret" club or cult.
In some ways I'm jealous of the Flat-Earth community; did anyone see "Beyond the Curve"? The fact they were coming together and spending time, energy, and money to try and prove their case is...
In some ways I'm jealous of the Flat-Earth community; did anyone see "Beyond the Curve"? The fact they were coming together and spending time, energy, and money to try and prove their case is outstanding. Could you imagine what the world would be like if we had groups of people like this for real issues?
Imagine we were back in 2014 and we had "renegade scientists" like this; a group of individuals in pursuit of the truth. People in say Flint, MI who were willing to go out and test the waters of the Flint river because they didn't trust the government's knowledge. If we had highly educated people going out and performing experiments every day in the real world we could have possibly prevented the Flint Water Crisis.
I wish it was more main stream for Science to play in active role in the world around us.
well i mean, we do for a lot of things! there are lots of examples of citizen scientists and amateur scientist groups who do things of that sort--and conversely, there are a lot of sources of data...
Could you imagine what the world would be like if we had groups of people like this for real issues? Imagine we were back in 2014 and we had "renegade scientists" like this; a group of individuals in pursuit of the truth. People in say Flint, MI who were willing to go out and test the waters of the Flint river because they didn't trust the government's knowledge. If we had highly educated people going out and performing experiments every day in the real world we could have possibly prevented the Flint Water Crisis.
well i mean, we do for a lot of things! there are lots of examples of citizen scientists and amateur scientist groups who do things of that sort--and conversely, there are a lot of sources of data in the world that scientists and academics use which are partially or entirely citizen/amateur-produced, from things like open street map to observations in astronomy and everything in between those two.
It's Ars trying to be too clever with the title and work in a "flat-out wrong" joke. The url slug, squishful-thinking-whats-inflated-flat-earth-believers-in-2019 implies that this wasn't even...
It's Ars trying to be too clever with the title and work in a "flat-out wrong" joke. The url slug, squishful-thinking-whats-inflated-flat-earth-believers-in-2019 implies that this wasn't even their first try and that initially it was something like "Squishful Thinking: What's inflated the flat-earth believers in 2019?", which is... probably even worse.
I edited it a little to try to make it more understandable (but less clever).
both are taking place, so i think it'll be fine regardless of the comprehension issue. there's definitely been an uptick in the number of people who (ironically or otherwise) believe in the flat...
I think saying there's a resurgence of flat Earthers is different from saying their views are now "lively" due to being amplified via the modern web,
both are taking place, so i think it'll be fine regardless of the comprehension issue. there's definitely been an uptick in the number of people who (ironically or otherwise) believe in the flat earth, just as there has been an uptick in the spread of those beliefs because of the internet.
I've never met a flat earther in person, but their visibility onlie is certainly at an all time high, and i've been an active user on alternative forums since before there was a web. My money is...
I've never met a flat earther in person, but their visibility onlie is certainly at an all time high, and i've been an active user on alternative forums since before there was a web.
Sixteen percent? That's alarmingly high. I assumed it was a few hundred people at most who just had a very large internet presence.
How many people from this survey are just doing it for a joke? I don't believe it's that high
Does anyone have any more information on the actual survey? Link? Sample size? Anything?
Always a bit suspect when I see statistics in an article that doesn't link to the actual results or info from the survey.
Literally doesn't mean a thing if I don't know the number of total people surveyed, actual questions asked, demographics, etc.
Like if 25 people were surveyed that's only 4 flat earthers.
Seems to have been this poll done by YouGov last April. 8215 participants, with 84% of the total responding to "Do you believe that the world is round or flat?" with "I have always believed the world is round", the other 16% is spread across the other 4 options.
As always though, data that comes from online surveys is extremely questionable.
online surveys are sometimes [1] less reliable than calling people, yes, but this article is... pretty bad at demonstrating that in literally any way, for a couple of reasons.
but the 2016 election is actually an awful example of online polling (and polling in general) being bad. the polling in 2016 was more accurate than average nationally and about average at the state level (in addition to being slightly more accurate nationally than in 2012); and, while online polling both did quite poorly relative to their performance in 2012 and their live-caller counterparts in 2016, a lot of that is because of the two experimental methodology online pollsters in surveymonkey and google surveys. the two standard online pollsters, yougov and lucid, did quite well. yougov in fact actually performed second best in accurately polling the 2018 midterms, ahead of every other pollster besides cygnal, and including the NYT/Siena College collaboration project which was about as transparent in its live-caller methodology as any polling project ever could be.
for another thing, almost all polls managed to track with the result within their margin of error anyways (and also close to the final result). very few pollsters--even online ones--suffered a polling miss out of the ordinary that year at the national level. it just happens that, in the US, the popular vote does not decide the president, which is something that polling does not reflect. i have no idea what the "small sample-size numbers" they're looking at are there either, because most online polls are considerably larger than traditional polling because they're cheaper and less constrained by response rates.
(oh, and their very brief analysis here sucks--but that's a whole different issue, lol)
doesn't back up their point. for one thing, pollsters weight for representation (with varying degrees of accuracy), but for another thing the actual citation is from an article written the day before the 2016 election--which again, the pollsters largely nailed--and uses a bunch of polls as examples that used traditional live-calling, not online outreach. this one that the article talks about that was so volatile, for example?
that was a traditional, live-caller poll, not an online one. the same is true, actually of literally every poll talked about in that article. i have no idea why the fuck they even cited it, because it entirely contradicts the point they're trying to make.
is literally useless. you can levy the same argument against live-caller, traditional polling (because who the fuck answers a call seeking to poll you about something? probably not most people.), weighting exists, and in any case this almost certainly has no bearing on the statistical significance of any polling. [2]
is basically a strawman, because there are no serious pollsters out there who are about to tell you their truth is unassailable. besides the fact that the lot of them share their methodology, margins of error, sample sizes, etc. to be publicly scrutinized, you're probably not going to find any pollster saying their polling is the whole, absolute, unquestionable truth--hell, most of them don't even have analysis of any kind in their poll releases about what their findings mean, they just read out the findings of their polling, because that's their job.
there's probably some other stuff i'm missing in there, but i think you get my memo and i'm tired of tracking down sources to dispute this mildly uninteresting point. there are definitely many valid reservations about online polling--but that article sucks at explaining them in pretty much every way possible or at actually presenting good points for why online polling can be questionable.
[1] by generally, i mean "this is entirely reliant on where you live" in a lot of cases to begin with. a lot of french electoral polls are conducted online for example and they've nailed the last few elections pretty well.
[2] and if it did, pollsters would actually try to do something about it, presumably? they're not stupid, lol.
edit: some minor fixes
I'd like to see the difference between this survey and ones conducted in other countries.
It probably lower in most countries, it's linked to extremist Christians, creationists, which you don't find as much in Europe for example.
I don't see the connection?
People who believe that scientists are wrong about the Earth being 4.5 billion years old because the Bible says it's 6,000 years old are more likely to also not believe scientists saying that the Earth is round.
I've never met anyone who legitimately believed in flat Earth, let alone a christian who did, but I can sort of see connection.
Extremist Christians and creationists are highly skeptical of science, often picking and choosing what they believe, and categorically denying science when it even slightly butts with their own beliefs. Quite frequently they aren't interested in a middle ground, or some compromise between their own truth and science; science is WRONG and only their truth has it figured out. It's very much like a cult in that respect.
So I could easily see how someone who already rejects the science of Earth's age, formation, geologic history and the trustworthiness of scientists in general could fall for flat Earth bogus.
This nice short documentary goes into it a bit:
https://youtu.be/ecfqbWCiZSA?t=253
To me it looks like the whole Flat Earth movement has nothing to do with finding the "truth". It's more about being part of some "secret" club or cult.
In some ways I'm jealous of the Flat-Earth community; did anyone see "Beyond the Curve"? The fact they were coming together and spending time, energy, and money to try and prove their case is outstanding. Could you imagine what the world would be like if we had groups of people like this for real issues?
Imagine we were back in 2014 and we had "renegade scientists" like this; a group of individuals in pursuit of the truth. People in say Flint, MI who were willing to go out and test the waters of the Flint river because they didn't trust the government's knowledge. If we had highly educated people going out and performing experiments every day in the real world we could have possibly prevented the Flint Water Crisis.
I wish it was more main stream for Science to play in active role in the world around us.
well i mean, we do for a lot of things! there are lots of examples of citizen scientists and amateur scientist groups who do things of that sort--and conversely, there are a lot of sources of data in the world that scientists and academics use which are partially or entirely citizen/amateur-produced, from things like open street map to observations in astronomy and everything in between those two.
I've tried to read that title 3 times so far and can't make out what you meant. What word is the emphasis on? might help me
It's Ars trying to be too clever with the title and work in a "flat-out wrong" joke. The url slug,
squishful-thinking-whats-inflated-flat-earth-believers-in-2019implies that this wasn't even their first try and that initially it was something like "Squishful Thinking: What's inflated the flat-earth believers in 2019?", which is... probably even worse.I edited it a little to try to make it more understandable (but less clever).
both are taking place, so i think it'll be fine regardless of the comprehension issue. there's definitely been an uptick in the number of people who (ironically or otherwise) believe in the flat earth, just as there has been an uptick in the spread of those beliefs because of the internet.
I've never met a flat earther in person, but their visibility onlie is certainly at an all time high, and i've been an active user on alternative forums since before there was a web.
My money is it's a psyop test.
it's not my title, it's ars technica's. i generally don't editorialize titles unless they're egregious.