Not Yet FREEPED

From RealClimate:

Dennis Bray and Hans von Storch have been making surveys of climate scientists for a number of years with the reasonable aim of seeing what the community thinks (about IPCC, climate change, attribution etc). They have unfortunately not always been as successful as one might like - problems have ranged from deciding who is qualified to respond; questions that were not specific enough or that could be interpreted in very different ways; to losing control of who answered the questionnaire (one time the password and website were broadcast on a mailing list of climate 'sceptics').

I can say that, whatever other problems this survey may have, it has not yet been FREEPED by the folks on the Climate Sceptics mailing list. Bray and von Storch have made it more difficult for unqualified respondents to access the poll, or for anyone to respond on multiple occasions, and so far this extra security seems to have done the trick.

The climate sceptic people did get hold of a survey that these folks were in the process of conducting, but I was able to contact the fellow at Globescan who was running it and, hopefully, when the results come out they will have been cleaned up.

What surprised me is that anyone from a company (Globescan) purporting to conduct "global public opinion and stakeholder research" should appear to be unaware of the methods used to influence on-line surveys.

So here's the wiki definition of FREEPING. Think of it next time you hear about a poll that claims 90% of Canadians want to make abortion illegal.