Voodoo polling corner again
The Guardian's front page story on the NHS reports findings of a voodoo poll in their front page story:
"More than 90% of those who voted in a British Medical Journal poll believed the planned health reforms should be scrapped. Of 2,947 votes cast on bmj.com over the last week, 2,706 said the reforms should be dropped while 241 said they should stay"
The story does, at least, not claim this is specifically representative of anything, but the very fact it is reported carries the implication that it is in some way meaningful or representative of BMJ readers or people involved in the medical profession (in that sense the Guardian's report is less bad than the PA copy, which presented the figures as being representative of BMJ readers). This was not, however, a poll in any meaningful sense, but an open access click button question on their website.
As ever, such open access polls are not properly weighted or sampled and are very easily fixed by people distributing the link to others to encourage them to vote... such as, erm, Guardian star-columnist Polly Toynbee here.
If you are a journalist reading this I again implore you to read this guidance from the British Polling Council on how journalists should report polls, particularly Q.13 on how to tell whether a poll is worth taking seriously or not.
In this particular circumstance the finding isn't grossly misleading as there is good evidence to suggest NHS employees do indeed oppose the reforms (see, for example, this YouGov poll of NHS employees for 38 Degrees), but in a way that makes it even worse - reporting worthless findings when there are properly conducted ones out there.
