Darwin, Britain's Hero, Is Still Controversial In U.S.

"mazorj" wrote in message
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"Bruce Remick" wrote in message
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"mazorj" wrote in message
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"Bruce Remick" wrote in message
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I still would be interested in learning if Harris only counted a
response from individuals who already were familiar with Darwin and his
work.

Right away you run into trouble. Plenty of creationists and ID
advocates think they know their Darwin. You'd have to ask a battery of
questions about Darwin and evolution before you could get any idea of
the accuracy of the responses of "Yes, I am familiar".

For those who tested positive for knowing Darwin and evolution, can
anyone doubt that the percentage of those who accept evolution would be
significantly higher?

So from what you say, it would seem near impossible to corral enough
educated open-minded, unbiased individuals to ever conduct a meaningful
poll. If you know Darwin you're out. If you never heard of him you're
out. If religion plays a significant part in your life you're out. If
you're an atheist you're out. If you own more than one Darwin medal
you're out...........

Maybe I misunderstood what you were driving at with "I still would be
interested in learning if Harris only counted a response from individuals
who already were familiar with Darwin and his work." My point was that in
order to do that, you can't just ask the question "Are you familiar with
Darwin and his work?" to screen and limit the participants to those who
actually know enough about Darwin and evolution. Most anti-Darwinians
fancy themselves as knowledgeable, as in "Know thine enemy" even though in
the vast majority of cases, whatever they "know" comes from sermons and
diatribes reviling him (and maybe a feature episode or two on the History
Channel). And since most people don't like to admit ignorance even in an
anonymous poll, you'll have another block of respondents who don't know
jack about Charles but will say they do.

Not being a statistician, I really don't know how I would handle such a
survey if I wanted to get a true and meaningful result. First, I would
probably rule out anyone I asked about Darwin who had never heard of him or
his theories. That might be the subject for another survey. I would
probably like to uncover something more thought provoking than the
predictable opinions likely given by various groups of people.


What trips me up here is that you shifted your stated criteria from "only
including those familiar with Darwin and his work," to excluding just
about everybody because in your view they cannot be "educated
open-minded, unbiased individuals" if they know Darwin, if they don't know
Darwin, if they never heard of him, if they are religious or if they are
atheist. Sure, that excludes just about everybody, but that's not what
you asked in your original question.

I guess my thought was that it would seem to be impossible to conduct a
random survey while trying to ensure that a cross section of society is
included in it. It's not as simple as asking whether you're for Obama or
McCain because the majority of people have heard of them and have developed
opinions.


I took the original question to mean "Did they only poll people with
enough knowledge to intelligently answer the questions" or did they
interview "any warm body that answered the telephone"? In most surveys
you want true random selection (no, not evolutionary random selection,
just statistically random selection) because you want truly representative
slices of all members of the overall population.

So if you wanted to limit respondents only to people who have an accurate
and adequate (even if only a layman's) grasp of Darwin and evolution,
first they'd have to pass a moderately tough quiz on the topic. I don't
know why you'd want to do it that way. The results would only confirm
that "the vast majority of people who really know evolution think it's a
valid scientific model." As I said, that's already a no-brainer. Most
surveys want to know what the entire population thinks, not just one
limited slice of it. And in reporting the results of the poll, you would
have to state your findings with the limiting condition "Among people who
have an accurate and adequate understanding of Darwin and evolution..."

That would be one way. I don't see how you could conduct a poll asking the
entire population what it thinks of Plato when only the educated are likely
to have heard enough about him to form any kind of an opinion. If I
commissioned such a poll, I would want responses only from that educated
population segment.