UPDATE: At first I was concerned about this poll and the language involved. Now from comments I’m seeing a number of people whom aren’t worried and see an opportunity to voice their opinion. I’ll leave it up to the reader to decide if they wish to participate. – Anthony
Wow, just wow. Who would think we’d see this sort of language and lack of sound judgment from a science museum? In the Now playing at a museum near you, the “Day After Tomorrow Map” thread, something interesting was discovered.
Once you click the “count me out” button, you enter a netherworld of governmental lists. The London Science Museum might want to think about redoing this web feature. The images are below, here’s the link.
Okay…now look what happens when you click “COUNT ME OUT”. Yellow highlighter mine.
Not only is this insulting and threatening to the reader, it virtually ensures that all responses logged by the London Science Museum are “COUNT ME IN” if you originally chose to vote otherwise.
Future presentation of results to the government: “The results show overwhelmingly that people agree with us. Hardly anyone chose COUNT ME OUT.
Even with the caveat the list*, how many people would trust it? I wouldn’t. I doubt many people even get to the caveat. The main statement is just too worrisome.
Perhaps the “COUNT ME OUT” respondents get a visit from these chaps? 😉
To be fair, respondents get a similar message if they choose to be counted in.
However, one wonders how many people will respond at all once they see that language.
The Science Museum really ought to pull this feature or redo language in it in my opinion.
h/t to alert WUWT reader coddbotherer
UPDATE: 10/24 @11:30PM
It appears some robovoting hit this poll. Robert Phelan’s letter pretty well sums up my thinking on this issue.
Sirs:
By now you must be aware that your on-line Prove It poll was seriously compromised. I voted “count-me-out” once under my own name, but after the individual who corrupted your poll revealed himself, I tested your polling system with two consecutive “count-me-in” votes, which were both apparently accepted.
Leaving aside my distaste for your support of politicized, Lysenko-style “science”, as both a social scientist and computer systems consultant I respect data and am appalled by the shoddy manner in which your organization collected it. A few suggestions:
1. State clearly the purpose of your poll and exactly which data will be used for that purpose.
2. You stated that you would pass the results to the government:
a. if the results had fairly resulted in a “count-me-out” majority, would those results have been passed on?
b. it would be helpful top explain what you would do with the comments you requested from the “count-me-outs”;
c. since the results were to be passed, presumably, to the UK government, foreigners such as myself should have been excluded from the voting. Checking the IP location of voters should be easy.
3. No one, either inside the UK or outside received the follow up e-mail. The explanation provided about ensuring one vote per person, frankly, makes no sense.
4. Maintaining a confidential list of voter names, e-mail addresses and IP’s to verify non-duplication would be easy. Making the voting a two-step process, where the voter had to respond to a follow-on e-mail would be even more secure.
5. Maintaining a list of non-acceptable names for screening: Joseph Stalin, Lenin, Mao Tse-tung and Mickey Mouse all claimed to have voted no, as did Keith Briffa, Michael Mann, Gavin Schmidt and James Hansen.
7. Create a display page where interested persons can view the names who have voted. Given the politicized nature of the topic, a unified alphabetical list would be appropriate.
8. Test the security of your poll before putting it on-line. Find a good hacker and pay him only if he succeeds in breaking into your system.
If you people can’t even run an on-line poll, why should anyone consider your opinions on climate? If this poll was so important that you needed two ministers of HMG to introduce it, why didn’t you get it done right?
I intend my suggestions to be helpful; if you find them so then I would be glad to be of further assistance. I am bitterly opposed to the position you have taken on “AGW” but I would not allow that to interfere with my professionalism.
Oh, one last suggestion. Don’t even try to salvage the results of this poll. Wipe them, make the changes I’ve suggested and start again.
Robert E. Phelan
Adjunct Instructor of Sociology
Business Systems and Automation Consultant
A commenter on our site, “lihard” has seemingly confessed to adding a thousand votes via a script. There was a period of about 15 minutes where the count jumped about 1000 votes. It appears “lihard” was at fault as he pre-announced it here in comments. Of course there was little anyone could do about it. I speak for myself and the moderation staff in saying we strongly object and are offended by his ballot stuffing and want to make clear that it is not condoned in any way. Whether or not the poll was put together with apparently no security in place does not justify any kind of dishonest activity.
However, since that burst (if indeed he, lihard, did one) the vote count has steadily risen, I believe those to be valid. If the Science Museum has any logs, they should be able to filter those ~1000 in question out. I hope they do.
I don’t condone ballot stuffing in any form. Unfortunately it can happen when polls like this one don’t appear to have the most basic simplistic security. The interesting thing here is that if anybody wanting to stuff the poll, no matter what side of the argument they are on, could easily have done so. No special skills are needed to boost the counter…just keep clicking the submit button. Any kid can do it.
Perhaps the Science Museum didn’t think of security for cyberspace like they do for their exhibits. The internet is a harsh place and prone to such things. The lack of due diligence for security is as troubling as the language they used which originally caught my attention.
The polls we do here at WUWT don’t suffer from these problems, as they have anti-ballot stuffing security built in courtesy of WordPress. I hope that the Science Museum will upgrade their poll security if they choose to continue with it. Also for the record, you’ll find me logged once in poll, shortly after posting this story on 11/23 approximately 9:30-10AM PST, with my full name and email address given. If anyone from the Science Museum (or the UK government) wishes to contact me, they can use that email address. – Anthony
In the Times article from which I quoted the Martin Luther King remark above, I’ve just noticed this:
“Chris Rapley, the director of the Science Museum, said that a last minute decision had been made to create the exhibition in August after a briefing at the Department of Energy and Climate Change.
‘We realised that public interest had flattened out and yet here we were approaching the most historic negotiations in human history,’ he said. The museum had not been planning to run a climate change exhibition until 2011”.
So the Director of a major museum is taking orders directly from a government department, and sees nothing wrong with this. And if the Ministry of Defence called him in to talk about an exhibition pushing the new Trident Missile? Chris Rapley is clearly unfit for the job of museum director.
coddbotherer (06:32:19)
Its a museum of scientific artefacts, who seem be be making Wallace and Gromit, speed dating, and climate change as their dynamic new image.
24/10/2009 at 1845hrs (UK time) 433 IN and 2700 OUT!!!!
For information the Science Museum poll does NOT allow comments which contain more than one link, so be careful.
Just added my penny’s worth to them:
“I have just had a look around the your site on the “Prove it” campaign. I am pretty disgusted as there are “Facts” which are downright wrong, and other statements which are highly misleading, most notably the statement “Ice cores reveal that carbon dioxide and temperature have been tightly linked throughout history.” They have, but as you should be aware, the peak in CO2 levels has always been hundreds of years after the temperature peak. This FACT should have been clearly stated, not the sophistry you have employed.
I am also highly disturbed to read in The Times that this exhibition appears to have been arranged at very short notice at the behest of a government department. Would you have been so quick to mount an exhibition on the Trident replacement program if the MoD had so asked?
I am deeply saddened by this politicisation of your remit. It is likely that I will take further action.”
I’m not sure what further action I can take? Having read through some of the pages, there is so much which is downright dishonest, and if not that, highly misleading. Would the Public Accounts Committee in the HoC take any action?
I’ve been wondering whether to stand against Gordon Brown (neighbouring constituency) at the election next year as a “Climate Sense” candidate – if only to get the free mailing into every household to try to dispel the idiocy, and get the people some other source of info than the MSM.
I signed the science Museum vote— count me out, and havent had an email back yet.
I signed the goverment one about the Advert waste and got and email staright back.
Probably have a mob of green protestor around in the morning to re-educate me about my envirothought crimes—- well they can listen to my Harley Davidson.
If I truely beleived we were in peril I would cut right back on CO2 ( but I’m not bad anyway car does 45mpg, house is double glazed, cavity wall insulation, energy saving bulbs in most light) but all I see is lies , spin and an NGO gravy train
This poll is starting to look very strange. A quick search on Yahoo or Google shows that the opening got fairly wide coverage with a lot of sites linking directly to it. The coverage does not generally seem to be negative…. I’d love to know whether these numbers really represent a popular backlash or whether there are a few skeptic trolls driving up the numbers, or….?
Screen captures of this page are probably in order because it just may disappear Monday morning.
Is Tom in Texas the only one !
24/10/2009 at 1945 (UK time) 441 IN and 2800 OUT.
Signed the Museum site with a count me out several hours ago— still havent had an email back. Probably have the climate Stazi around tomorrow to put electrodes on my bits to re-educate me!
That in/out counter is becoming appalling. The Foreign Secretary and his brother, Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, appeared at the opening of this thing and put their prestige behind it. If this exhibit and poll were so damned important why didn’t the morons who put the poll together make sure that voting would be restricted to UK residents and that there would be one vote per person?
UK residents should be howling about the politicization of science, not to mention the gross incompetence of the people doing the politicizing. If you’re going to try a pull a Yamal, at least consult with Keith Briffa to see how you can keep it plausible and under wraps for a decade.
Alec J. : by all means, Run, Alec Run!
2 days & still waiting for my confirmation email.
I guess they may have bitten off more than they can chew.
DaveE.
Count me out, too!
I posted this comment:
/Mr Lynn
AlecJ
A Climate Sense Party is a brilliant idea. Register it straight away with the Electoral Commission or whatever, and counrt me as a founder member. To complain about the Science Museum, you could try writing to some of the trustees, who are listed at
http://www.nmsi.ac.uk/nmsipages/boardoftrustees.asp
Vladimir Illych Ullyanov, thanks for being part of PROVE IT! There’s still lots more you can do…
Well, with the score at “449 counted in so far 2937 counted out so far” & having voted out under my real name & e-mail, I thought I’d give the Holy Church of Warming a bit of a helping hand.
Lenin’s e-mail is VIU@Kremlin.ru if you wish to contact him!
“PROVE IT!” ? hmm, I think they should retitle that to “BELIEVE IT!”
As I tested the poll earlier it showed that the poll has been costructed rather poorly.
The java scripts which handle the polling don’t do any duplicate vote checking. So it doesn’t check for duplicate names, email addresses or ip addresses. And the email addresses don’t have to be valid or the names make any sense at all. So anyone can vote unlimited times and for example put 007 for the name and your@system.sucks as email 😉
As a result this poll is as valid as the Mann made papers.
I also suspect that there isn’t any automated email confirmation built into the scripts. And I would also like to remind anyone who has sent any comments through the web site that there’s a possibility that your comments won’t be sent anywhere.
In the mean time I’ll try to resist the urge not to make the poll end at 0 to 1 000 000 😉
-Lihard
F1yingwellie (11:46:00) :
Is Tom in Texas the only one
The only one what?
The only one to notice the Lihard 1000 vote jump?
If someone stuffed 1000 votes into the ballot box, you can be 100% sure that will wreck everything. If so, they will surely notice and will invalidate the entire poll. I really hope that is not the case. Cheating always nets out to self-destruction in the long run. It always catches up. Not only is it dishonorable, but it is foolish.
I think Lihard was only saying that now WUWT was linked to it, the vote tally would sharply increase. Honestly and fairly. That had durn well better be the reason–and I am quite sure I speak for Anthony and the moderator crew in this.
24/10/2009 at 2345hrs (UK Summer Time) it was 454 IN and 3000 OUT!!!!!
@Evan Jones
I spent a fair amount of time last night, just after the OUT vote started to take off watching the Science Museum poll site carefully. I refreshed the screen every 2-3 seconds to see if there was any easily discernible pattern to the vote increase. I could see none. Sometimes the votes went up by one or two per screen refresh, at other times it would be a minute and a half before a new vote came in.
11:35:24 424 Outs
11:46:46 Lihard: “As what goes for the poll on that uk site, anyone wanna bet the out wotes are up by 1000 after a few minutes?”
11:57 485 Outs
12:02 Somebody is roboposting “outs”
12:07 769 Outs
12:08 1388 Outs
evanmjones, no I wasn’t saying that it would be the Watt’s effect. Didn’t you read my second post? The polling system is so poorly done that there wasn’t any change to begin with it to have any validity.
Anybody can vote as many times they like. The poll is made with the same “high” standards as anything AGW is associated with. If I would put time to it and resolve the underlying technical mechanisms of the scripts I could even make the poll count to go downwards. That’s assuming I could increase the vote count so much that it would start again from zero.
-Lihard
Oh, great. Unless they can filter it out, that is going to invalidate what would have been a solid win.
God, I hate cheating. Cheaters always lose in the long run and they mess things up for everyone else. On both sides.
Didn’t you read my second post?
Not when I posted, no. That sucks.
Maybe they can count only the votes that included commentary?
Lihard, all you’ve done is shown that you’re smarter than they are. Enjoy your triumph.