U.N. Sets Itself Up For A Freeping

I got this email from the U.N. the other day, asking me to visit their website (blanked out in the above) and complete their survey on what must be done to combat climate change. "Your views on which approaches to climate change will succeed and what key barriers are most slowing progress are important [enough(?)]to be widely heard." Thanks for the vote of confidence, fellows, but I have issues (beyond your poor grammar).


For example, how are you selecting your experts? My only thin claim to AGW expertise is the fact that I write this blog. Now, I note that you are making use of Globescan. I wrote about a previous Globescan AGW poll here, done by them on behalf of the European Climate Foundation. I was able to pick up the URL and complete the previous survey because it was widely circulated on a denialist mailing list. If I received your invitation because I participated in that survey, then it is likely that any number low-grade pseudo-scientists have received the same material, and your results are already in jeopardy.

In short, the security measures you have taken are dismal. I have redacted the URL to your survey in the above, but had I been so inclined I could have distributed it to any number of forums and lists with the tag "FREEP this poll!", and a 1,000 assholes with computers would have turned up at the site and essentially defaced the thing. Now, there are any number of methods by which this kind of result can be avoided, but your survey employs none of them. Pretty poor quality control for the U.N.

PS. Eli thinks the FREEPERS have already been on this one, but I have found no evidence for that yet. Probably just a matter of time, however.

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.

Why Online Polls Are Stupid

I've voted five times so far in this one, which I discovered through FreeD, so of course its already been heavily FREEPED. Nevertheless, in a couple of days watch the "results" to get reported in The Sun or on Lifesite. Canadians support reinstating death penalty, or maybe: Angus Reid pulls online poll that shows Canadians support reinstating death penalty.