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The Alpha Course "Does God exist?" online poll is fixed

1 points by apexauk ↗ HN
The Alpha Course in the UK are running a marketing campaign at the moment with posters asking the question "Does God exist?" followed by empty tick boxes for Yes/No/Probably. They've got the same thing on their homepage at http://uk.alpha.org/ set up as an online poll, complete with "see results so far" link.

Problem is..

clicking yes always returns 36-34-30. clicking no always returns 35-34-30. clicking probably always returns 35-34-31.

The votes are being posted to and the "results" returned by http://uk.alpha.org/?q=/alpha09/poll&vote=[yes|no|probably] - view source to see the html returned with the "results".

Amusingly you can get the stats as high as 40% "no" by adding lots of votes at once e.g. http://uk.alpha.org/?q=/alpha09/poll&vote=no&vote=no&vote=no&vote=no&vote=no etc. see here: http://bit.ly/somethingfishygoingon

Of course as soon as you vote anything else the numbers return to normal.

Regardless of your religious beliefs, surely this is pushing the line a bit far in terms of presenting it as a real poll when the results are fixed?

6 comments

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apexauk
P.s. I don't mean this to be focused on religion. The interesting question to me is "is it legit to host an online poll backed by a significant ad campaign and present fake results?" If it helps, try imagining that this is a poll by some other brand asking "Do you think our product is the best?" and presenting you with what they make out to be what other people think.

Seems to me like this is deceiving the public. How do poll results (or not) relate to advertising standards laws?

ErrantX
It's called publicity: they have a product to "sell" to us.

It's wrong (in this case probably morally) but how do we stop everyone doing it :(

apexauk
Say Apple hosted an online "poll" asking "Are our laptops the best? Yes/No/Probably" with a "see results so far" link. Would that be "publicity"? Or would it land them in the poo legally?
michaelparks2
Look at the stats again. They are definitely not fixed.
pbhjpbhj
try imagining that this is a poll by some other brand asking "Do you think our product is the best?"

Of course it's not a poll for a product at all.

michaelparks2
Don't be ridiculous. Yes votes are currently 2%, Probably 1% and No 97%. I would say that they are being very open. I would also say that more militant atheists are trying to fix the numbers as this does not reflect official statistics. But hey - got you talking though didn't it? All publicity is good publicity and anything that inspires the debate is good.