That’s right 6 Mouseketeers…count ’em…one, two, three…..er…maybe four…
The BBC’s own arithmetic doesn’t add up……Do you remember being asked abot animal testing by the BBC?…I wasn’t.
So where do they get the figure of 1/3 of Briton’s wanting a test ban?….the same figure has been used on news bulletins unqualified by the fact that the figure was derived from a poll of a mere 1,000 people……
Animal test ban favoured by a third in BBC poll
Almost one in three (31%) adults say the government should ban all medical research experiments on animals, according to a poll.
The poll, on indications of public attitudes to animal testing, was commissioned for BBC Radio 5 Live.
The BBC admits that ‘ComRes interviewed 1,000 adults by telephone between 30 November and 2 December 2012.’ but that’s not what the title says nor the first paragraph…the meaning is entirely different.
The BBC are going for broke with this ‘research’ making it into a big story with Derbyshire covering it on her programme today.
Couldn’t bring myself to invest time to listen to her….so can’t say there is an ‘agenda’ either way….but the way the figure is presented suggests soemone has one…..
..In fact I’ve just done my own poll to find out whether people think the BBC have an agenda here…and 100% of them believe they do….from my poll of one person………thanks to Mike sat next to me.
So conclusive proof of BBC bias.
No-one asked me, either. Mind you, I am in France…
Not sure what your point is here. Since when has any opinion poll used anything other than a representative sample?
Point being…it’s not ‘a third of Briton’s oppose animal testing’…as suggested by the article title and first paragraph.
It’s a third of 1000 people polled.
The title is misleading…as are news bulletins quoting the figure without qualification.
In fact that’s what I just said in the post. Good if you would actually read and take time to understand it rather than just fire off a comment based purely on an urge to be contrary.
Isn’t this what all polls are, though? Aren’t all poll results a percentage of whatever amount of people they asked?
Actually, It’s a third of 1000 people polled in a poll… commissioned for BBC Radio 5 Live.
‘Data were weighted to be demographically representative of all British adults aged 18+’
One is sure it were. Probably using the same iPhone address book as derives QT each week.
But, usually things are commissioned by people aren’t they?
So who commissioned this poll from ComRes ‘for’ the BBC?
Over to Two Shades of a Condo as the latest play-the-Alan ad hom-bot incarnation to appear.
Albaman’s point aside I would like to add how many of this 31% volunteered for to save the animals human tests? I suggest all those against testing on animals ‘put their money where their mouth is’ and form an orderly queue to enable scientists to make the same advances but avoid harming animals. If they do not want to join this queue then they can STFU.
Conclusive proof you’re an idiot.
‘ComRes interviewed 1,000 adults by telephone between 30 November and 2 December 2012.’ is at the start of the article, with an embedded link to the poll data.
Did you look at it? Do you question the integrity of ComRes?
Do you know much about the science of polling?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_poll
A 3% margin of error means that if the same procedure is used a large number of times, 95% of the time the true population average will be within the 95% confidence interval of the sample estimate plus or minus 3%. The margin of error can be reduced by using a larger sample, however if a pollster wishes to reduce the margin of error to 1% they would need a sample of around 10,000 people.[4] In practice, pollsters need to balance the cost of a large sample against the reduction in sampling error and a sample size of around 500–1,000 is a typical compromise for political polls. (Note that to get complete responses it may be necessary to include thousands of additional participators.)[5]
Re. ‘The BBC are going for broke with this ‘research’ making it into a big story with Derbyshire covering it on her programme today.’
No, the research was conducting by Radio 5…as you quote…for the programmes on the station…such as Victoria Derbyshire.
Can you explain? Are you Mike or Alan? or do you just have a split personality.
Maybe you just have a problem with polls where you don’t like the result?
What about this one?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-18038304
Condo
It would seem I’m not the only idiot on here.
Can’t disagree with you there Alan!!!
Cheers Albaman….you just won me £10.
Alan,
Most political polls are based on only 1000 people asked. In fact at surveys go for a 1000 as its the smallest number with the lowest margin of error.
Of course you knew that.
Very interesting but irrelevant.
As for ‘lowest margin of error’….just how do you assess that? Only way to do it is to poll your 1000 or whichever number you choose, and then poll the whole country to compare results.
Have you done that? No.
So all claims of ‘accuracy’ are bunk.
Polls are notoriously inaccurate.
How did the BBC’s own Jim Naughtie describe them…..‘…clearly ridiculous to listen to polls especially generated by email and round robin…you can’t run govt policy on the basis of group opinions’
They make great media headlines and can be interpreted to suit your own agenda……Much as has the BBC with its claim that 1/3 of all Brits are anti animal testing.
Loathe that I am to agree anything from Prole but he is quite correct this once. If the poll was genuinely a representative sample, (how respondents are selected) then a sample size of 2,000 has a 19 in 20 (95%) chance of the result falling in the range of + or -2% of the true value. Dropping the poll size to 1,000 halves the cost of interviewing and widens the margin of uncertainty only slightly. Increasing the sample size beyond 2,000 has the converse effect of multiplying the cost of the survey with very little improvement in accuracy. That is why polls are the size they are.
This would appear to have been a quota sample, not a random sample, so it is impossible to measure how accurately it replicates a true random sample. But for this purpose the poll results are significant. Replicating the poll twenty times you would still get the same outcome nineteen times over.
The failing is indeed the question. Like “would you be in favour of 1,000 additional unexpected deaths each year to preserve the lives of laboratory rodents.
Sort of different to being against animal suffering.
Hey, condo, psst, come over here: **sotto voce** …I don’t think Alan really believes they asked every citizen in the UK the question, I really don’t.
BBC-NUJ is sure not on the side of members of UKIP being able to foster children in a Labour controlled council area; but BBC-NUJ sure is on the side of mice, in disease prevention research.
Unlikely to have been followed by the question; “If you had a dying child, would you go to a country that had used animal research if it meant that the child could be saved?”.
Perhaps they could also suggest that this third of the population protest by not using or buying any medicines that were developed using animal testing which would leave; lets see aspirin.
That would result in a big saving in the NHS budget
Where in the BBCs charter do they get the right to pay for surveys…merely to confirm whatever it is that they`d like us to “campaign for”?
Why and how do we get to pay for their wish lists to get some kind of “statistical veracity”?…and will the decent “More Or Less” turn this latest “Institute of Studies” mockery of a “poll” into slurry?
For I`m sick of the BBC showing me the contents of their nappies, as if its polished turds, not incontinence…then referring me to the Bristol Stool Index for me to care about it.
Sorry about that…the bloody BBC turns me a bit funny sometimes…despite Hardy, Brigstocke, Henry, and Thomas( who make me very sad …ah!)
Where does it say in the Charter they can’t? It’s a valid way of finding opinion which every news organisation uses.
It is a well known fact amongst pollsters that you can influence the answer by how you ask the question. You will notice that the BBC never publish the questions, so we do not know what question the survey sample were answering.
Not so hard to find the questions if you follow the link from the original post.
Click to access BBC_Radio_5_Live_Animal_Testing_December2012.pdf
Will the BBC be running a campaign that is based around a survey that explores attitudes towards the European Union*… where 2/3rds of the population want out.
***tumbleweed***
Though not
Or the one by the Press censorship Index compilers where we are ranked only 28th in the world…between Niger and Slovakia, so I`m told?
Leveson will put us on a par with Syria or Bahrain…so we`ll be all trussed up with throats exposed for Allahs halal butchery of the Press.
28th in world rankings…where are the BBC demanding that we lead the world, and go up those international charts…a disgrace etc…?
Hmm….the BBC don`t seem to want this survey.
No matter-China are really “on board” with our renewables programme, and would be really scared if we did carried it out…why, they`re committed to reducing CO2 emissions themselves(so says the BBC this morning).
No doubt ComRes asked 1000 of Prescotts fat pals at Shanghai Tech to confirm their findings.
Oh ,well done BBC!
Turkeys in a pork barrel these Beeboids eh?
Or a survey asking Britons if they are in favour of the ritual slaughter of animals.
****more tumbleweed****
Thought not #2
Its more the relevance of the survey than the purpose of the survey. Once again the BBC following the grievance trail walked by the same lefty group think. There is lots of animal cruelty out there to complain about from neutering to inserting nose rings in bulls to slaughtering of animals.
Animal testing is an essential part medicine development. Without the step of animal testing you will loose those researchers and companies developing cures for many diseases. It is not possible to move from test tube to human testing without animals. More job losses and delays in registering of medicines in the UK.
Instead of looking at this as animal cruelty perhaps look at the the animals as “involuntary heroes” in the fight against terrible diseases if that makes you feel better.
Was ‘Animal testing favoured by two thirds in BBC poll’ considered as a headline?
Thought not.
Spot on. How they announce the result tends to give the game away as with Labour winning a by-election by a couple of percent margin being a “resounding victory”. With 66% of the population agreeing with animal tests they could have gone with “UK overwhelmingly supports animal testing”.
“So conclusive proof of BBC bias.”
Not quite Alan, but good effort.
Small, far away.
How about 100% of british people think the BBC is Biased and should be subscription only.
As a poll by biased BBC shows the BBC cant be trusted, dear old auntie to be put down.
I totally agree that the spin, one third against testing, is all they could do with the results. However all news media are guilty of this. Generally most survey’s results just tell you how to suck eggs so the poor journo’s try any angle to fill a column.
In it isn’t bias. It’s journalism. But saying most people favour animal testing isn’t a headline grabber.
I would like to see a poll of how many BBC staff are using BBC computers in work hours to comment on this site.
tv tax payers money being put to good use obviously
So, basically what we have here is the BBC running a story about a poll the BBC itself commissioned. What’s the follow up going to be? A report on how BBC staff are responding to the BBC reporting of the poll?
Activist groups engage in push-polling all the time, but what’s the BBC’s excuse?
It is going to be like the oozelum bird. Flying round and round in ever decreasing circles until it disappears up its own fundament. It should be pretty comfortable in there.
Having to “weight” survey results always sounds a bit dodgy to me.
http://www.comres.co.uk/poll-digest/10/public-poll-methodology.htm
Well, looks like this one has given the trolls something to feed on, poor starved souls.
Surely any poll commissioned by the BBC is nothing more than a means for it to measure the ongoing effectiveness of its brainwashing on a given topic (so it has to be one close to the BBC’s ideological heart).
Plus, of course, it gives them a launchpad for featuring said topic again in another of their impartial world-beating pieces of investigative reporting. And so it goes – round and round and round…..
There is no problem with the sample size and methodology, but someone should ask why the bBBC paid for their own survey when there are already long-running independent annual surveys on this subject paid for from public money (conducted by Ipsos MORI for the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills).
Click to access ipsos-mori-poll-view.pdf
The most recent survey, earlier in 2012, found that 85% of those polled are ‘conditional acceptors’ of the use of animals in scientific research (i.e. they agree with at least 1 of 4 statements regarding the use of animals in scientific research for medical purposes and/or under high welfare conditions).
The survey does show some differences with age, level of education and social class: the young, poorly educated and lowest social classes are most likely to object to use of animals. This is a good description of the target audience for Radio 5, which probably explains why they wanted to commission a different survey and tell a different story.