Supposedly “scientific” internet polling is all the rage these days. But something that recently happened to me raises issues about just how extensively internet pollsters can now tailor so called scientific polls to achieve the results their clients want to use in their propaganda.  This tailoring may be harder to detect than the weighting done to raw responses by telephone pollsters because online polling has the ability to capture vast amounts of information on each member of the pool of people who have agreed to be polled.  I am a member on several on-line polling sites that supposedly pick members at random to conduct polls online polls on everything from social issues to entertainment to test marketing new brands of coffee.  I have belonged to them for several years. By now I suspect each organization has a good picture of my philosophic outlook and my tastes based on all my answers. A couple of months ago I had an unusual experience with the...(Read Full Post)