Liberal outlet the Daily Kos  today announced that it was filing a law suit against Research 2000.

I have just published a report by three statistics wizards showing, quite convincingly, that the weekly Research 2000 State of the Nation poll we ran the past year and a half was likely bunk.

Since the moment Mark Grebner, Michael Weissman, and Jonathan Weissman approached me, I took their concerns seriously and cooperated fully with their investigation. I also offered to run the results on Daily Kos provided that they 1) fully documented each claim in detail, 2) got that documentation peer reviewed by disinterested third parties, and 3) gave Research 2000 an opportunity to respond. By the end of last week, they had accomplished the first two items on that list. I held publication of the report until today, because I didn’t want to partake in a cliche Friday Bad News Dump. This is serious business, and I wasn’t going to bury it over a weekend.

We contracted with Research 2000 to conduct polling and to provide us with the results of their surveys. Based on the report of the statisticians, it’s clear that we did not get what we paid for. We were defrauded by Research 2000, and while we don’t know if some or all of the data was fabricated or manipulated beyond recognition, we know we can’t trust it. Meanwhile, Research 2000 has refused to offer any explanation. Early in this process, I asked for and they offered to provide us with their raw data for independent analysis — which could potentially exculpate them. That was two weeks ago, and despite repeated promises to provide us that data, Research 2000 ultimately refused to do so. At one point, they claimed they couldn’t deliver them because their computers were down and they had to work out of a Kinkos office. Research 2000 was delivered a copy of the report early Monday morning, and though they quickly responded and promised a full response, once again the authors of the report heard nothing more.

It was apparent from most poll results that something was amiss, but what you likely won’t hear from all media outlets is that the infamous poll showing that the “right wing” was full of “wing nuts” also goes by the way side. If you’ll note, the poll which is quite often cited by liberals was conducted by Research 2000. Read more…

If I’ve learned anything from the Wizard of Oz it’s that tin men have no hearts and straw men have no brains; so it comes as no surprise that brain dead people throw around terms such “straw man argument.” It’s a cop out to actually having a discussion, and in many ways is just creating a “straw man” by falsely presenting someone’s argument as misconstruing what you said. This isn’t to say that straw men arguments don’t crop up, only that every time I’ve been accuse of a “straw man argument,” I was the victim of being grouped with a group of people who I generally disagree with. You see this all the time, Republicans say you’re an “Obamanite” if you so much as take up for anything he does; the opposite is true you are called a “Paul-ite” if you take up for Ron Paul, a “Tea Bagger” if you take up for the “Tea Party” and a racist if you take up for Rand Paul. After these claims are made and you try to have an argument, about half way through you are accuse of a “straw man argument.” Wait a minute buster, what was that you just said? Did you just use a “straw man” 30 minutes ago and I ignored it? You can’t have a discussion without sometimes misconstruing someone’s beliefs on occasion, but likewise getting a fact or two wrong is completely different than grouping people together with a belief, so that you can let your mind at ease and ignore what the other person is saying. I’m just going to start throwing out the term “Representativeness heuristic” so that these people have to go look it up and I can go find a match.

Anyhow here’s a song about Cognitive bias: