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Quote by: Epistemologist  I can't really blame you, though, because once a few studies are screwed up, it lowers the reputation of the entire field. Nonetheless, I encourage you to take a somewhat more trusting attitude, because some statisticians do a good job. For instance, the people doing the Gallup polls are rather credible; that's not to say that they won't make mistakes, but I suppose we can trust them more than this private think-tank. |
Yes, to me all polls are automatically suspect. As for other kinds of statistics, the jury is still out but I will remain skeptical. Maybe if they didn't try to make people think that sampling a small number of people gives us a true picture of a much larger number of people I might be less skeptical. I don't have a problem with statistics such as ones that say, for example, "x percentage of Americans are between the ages of 18 and 44" because it is based on taking a census of the entire population (though it seems that some people still manage not to get counted) and not on some extrapolation from a small number applied to the whole.