L’Affaire Burnham: Ten Years Later

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 …

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.

Data Dump Friday is Back Again: More Iraq Opinion Polls plus a film of Lions Hugging a Woman

Here's the film you're looking for. Also, after being lazy for more than a month I've started uploading the remaining Iraq opinion polls at our old friend, the conflict data page.

Open the Door to all the Hidden Election Polling Data

The UK House of Lords has issued a call for evidence on the effects of political polling and digital digital media on politics.  Submissions are due next week so maybe someone out there wants to dash something off....or maybe someone would be so kind as to give me feedback on my proposal.  Below I give a …

Secret Data Sunday – Iraq Family Health Survey

The WHO-sponsored Iraq Family Health Survey (IFHS) led to a nice publication in the New England Journal of Medicine that came complete with an editorial puff piece extolling its virtues.  According to the NEJM website this publication has generated 60 citations and we're still counting.   If you cast a net wider than just medical publications then the  citation count …

Secret Data Sunday – Nassim Nicholas Taleb Edition

When data are central to scientific discussions, as is typically the case, then the relevant data should be open to all. OK, we don't have to be totally rigid about this.  People may sink a lot of effort into building a data set so it's reasonable for data builders to milk their data monopoly for …

Secret Data Sunday – AAPOR Investigates the Trump-Clinton Polling Miss Using Data you Can’t See

The long-awaited report from the American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR) on the performance of polling in the Trump-Clinton race is out.  You will see that this material is less of a stretch for the blog than it might seem to be at first glance and I plan a second post on it. Today …

Secret Data Sunday – The Iraq Child and Maternal Mortality Survey

Many readers of the blog know that there was a major cock-up over child mortality figures for Iraq.  In fact, exaggerated child mortality figures have been used to justify the 2003 invasion of Iraq, both prospectively and retrospectively. Here I won't repeat the basics one more time, although anyone unfamiliar with this debacle should click …

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 …

Data Dump Friday – Event Data on the Colombia Conflict, 1988 – 2005

Hello everybody.  Today initiates a new regular feature of the blog which I will call "Data Dump Friday". Each week I will post some conflict data on this page until I run out of stuff to post.  Unless I get a research assistant to streamline this operation this will go on for a long time. …