I just gave this presentation at the annual meeting of the American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR) in Toronto. The title of the talk is taken from Richard Kulka's Presidential Address to AAPOR. Back in 2009 AAPOR censured Gilbert Burnham of Johns Hopkins University for refusing to disclose basic information about his methodology for … Continue reading L’Affaire Burnham: Ten Years Later
fabrication
Fake Data and the War in Iraq
Here are the slides from a talk I gave yesterday at RHUL's PIR department. It pulls together many threads that I've developed on the blog but I won't give the links here since they are embedded in the document.
Fabrication in Survey Data: A Sustainable Ecosystem
Here is a presentation I gave a few weeks ago on fabrication in survey data. It includes some staple material from the blog but, mainly, I set off in a new direction - trying to explain why survey data get fabricated in the first place. While writing the presentation I realized that these conditions are similar … Continue reading Fabrication in Survey Data: A Sustainable Ecosystem
Secret Data Sunday – BBC Edition Part 2 – Data Journalism without Data
Last week I described my initial attempt to obtain some Iraq survey data from the BBC. You can skip the long back story that explains my interest in these data sets if you want. In short, though, these award-winning polls played an important role in establishing the historical record for the latest Iraq war but they … Continue reading Secret Data Sunday – BBC Edition Part 2 – Data Journalism without Data
Secret Data Sunday – BBC Edition Part 1
If you have spent any time on this blog you know that D3 Systems, together with KA Research Limited, fielded a lot of polls in Iraq during the occupation and that the ones I've managed to analyze show extensive evidence of containing fabricated data. Some such polls were commissioned by ABC news and won big awards. … Continue reading Secret Data Sunday – BBC Edition Part 1
Secret Data Sunday – Gary Langer Edition
Last Sunday I shared an unanswered email I had sent to the Senior Vice President for Editorial Quality at ABC news. The email gives a self-contained account of the overall context behind my data request, but I'll take another pass here just to be as clear as possible. There were a remarkable number of opinion polls … Continue reading Secret Data Sunday – Gary Langer Edition
Secret Data Sunday – ABC News (in the US) Stonewalls over their Dubious Iraq Public Opinion Polls
Below is an email that I sent to Kerry Smith, the Senior Vice President for Editorial Quality at ABC news, back in November of 2016. She did not reply.. Dear Ms. Smith, I am a professor of economics specialized in the quantitative analysis of armed conflict. I have a big body of work focused on … Continue reading Secret Data Sunday – ABC News (in the US) Stonewalls over their Dubious Iraq Public Opinion Polls
Data Dump Friday – Part 2, some Iraq Polling Data
Happy Friday. I have just posted here three new things. A list of all the data sets that Steve Koczela obtained from the State Department through his successful FOIA application. An Iraq poll from April 2006 fielded by the Iraq Center for Research and Strategic Studies (ICRSS). [Note - this organization seems to be defunct. Perhaps … Continue reading Data Dump Friday – Part 2, some Iraq Polling Data
Special Journal Issue on Fabrication in Survey Research
The Statistical Journal of the IAOS has just released a new issue with a bunch of articles on fabrication in survey research, a subject of great interest for the blog. Unfortunately, most of the articles are behind a paywall but, thankfully, the overview by Steve Koczela and Fritz Scheuren is open access. It's a beautiful piece … Continue reading Special Journal Issue on Fabrication in Survey Research
Chilcot on Civilian Casualties: Part 4
In October of 2004 The Lancet published a paper by Roberts et al. that estimated the number of excess deaths for the first year and a half of the Iraq war using data from a new survey they had just conducted. (Readers wanting a refresher course on the concept of excess deaths can go here.) … Continue reading Chilcot on Civilian Casualties: Part 4