Catholic Group Rewrites Internet Poll After Results Are In

Must be the 11th commandment: thou shalt lie and cheat at all costs if it supports thy opinion.

I blame their role models, practically every main character in the bible lies. “She’s my sister, I swear!”

Reverse Pharyngulation! We’ve been HAD!

Whatever. They’re idiots. LOL

84% of the people who regularly follow a catholic website think that gay marriage should be legal? This sounds like something /b/ did, or another pro-gay website.

Still, it looks like the Christians are getting bit in the ass. Fucking with polls in this country is a pretty serious thing.

Ironically, its the whole thing they were bitching about in the first place. The judge overturned prop 8, and they overturned their displeasing poll results.

I suspect that this “Society” is actually one lying bigot with not enough to do. He could save himself some trouble by just making up whatever “results” he wants from his bogus polls, and have the voting page be as phony as his bar graph. Clearly he’s not actually interested in other people’s opinions, only in bolstering his own.

Looks like they deleted the top option and rolled its votes into the second (went from six to five choices)

Internet polls are serious business. Sometimes giving up a little credibility and integrity is worth it in order to be right on the internet, am I right? Right guys? Guys?!?

Hopefully it will hasten Pharyngula’s stated goal-the demise of lousy internet polls. People have better things to do with their time.

One must admit that it is a creative approach to dealing with having your poll hacked, even if ethically it ranks up there with Watergate and Philip Morris.

For those attempting a Captain Renault-like “shock” at discovering poll tampering, look at how the catholic hierarchy have treated dissent in their ranks over the centuries and move on-nothing new here. Tempest in a teacup.

That site is just full of great information:

http://www.tfp.org/poll-results/which-is-it-global-warming-or-cooling.html

the ‘I support the decision’ is back. and is still over 75%.

lol, i remember this happening to some poll that pz myers had linked to. this might be an emerging trend for religious sites that post internet polls.

How did you get the original screen shot?

Is it assumed that dishonesty is the natural mode of such organizations?

Richard, unfortunately it’s a bit more than the single-man Catholic League. According to their website, “The American TFP relies on the dedication of approximately 75 full-time volunteers and 60 paid employees.”

David, if you’re using Windows, you can take a screenshot by hitting the ‘Print Screen’ button on your keyboard, typically abbreviated to ‘Prt Scr’. That will copy what’s currently on your screen (or screens) to the clipboard; from there you can open Paint and paste in the contents. (And then do stuff like cropping down the image to the relevant portion, so you don’t see the windows to Baby Recipes or Satanic rituals on your taskbar.)

If you look at some of the other ‘polls’ on their website, it looks like the dissenting option on this one was an accident. The choice to disagree with their conclusions is missing in most of their other ‘polls’.

Thank you for that info, Parse. Wishful thinking on my part.
fritzy, you said,

Personal opinions in this case are pretty much irrelevant anyway–violations of civil rights and the Constitution are not up to the whims of the majority.

Actually, in real-world terms, violations of civil rights by the whim of the majority continue for decades until the minority organizes, fights for their civil rights in the courts, and those violations are declared unconstitutional. Then several years go by until the Federal government gets off its ass and kicks the state governments to get off their asses, who finally, after several more decades of dragging their feet, kick the local governments to get off their asses to actually enforce the minority’s rights, which is done halfheartedly for a few more decades. By the time somebody actually benefits from the Constitutional protection they were denied, two or three generations have gone by.

Eric Hovind did the exact same thing after PZ linked to a poll on his website a couple of weeks ago. The word Evolution became Creation reversing the results of the poll.

If you look at some of the other ‘polls’ on their website, it looks like the dissenting option on this one was an accident. The choice to disagree with their conclusions is missing in most of their other ‘polls’.

That is one conclusion, of course it may be those other polls changed in the same manner, but no one noticed.

Consider ‘rel=”nofollow”‘ on links to such sites, don’t want to lend them undue credibility.

You know they are bankrupt when this starts happening. “Poll is unscientific” my ass.

These so called “Think Tanks”, are paid for giving their employers the answers they want to hear. They are marketing firms which deal in the distribution of canned statistics.

“What harm would it do, if a man told a good strong lie for the sake of the good and for the Christian church… a lie out of necessity, a useful lie, a helpful lie. Such lies would not be against God, he would accept them.”
Martin Luther

BTW: IMHO this is also the tool/methodology of the right.