And therein lies one of the weaknesses of a small sample, you have no way to ensure that is random enough. For example, you can have bad luck and get to sample exactly the most discrepant person in the group. And that's assuming that the authors of the pool have spent the money to get opinions from people really at random rather than following the easy route and get the opinions of people in the same location (which may be from the same opinion group).

"...Now almost all the news media is very closely tied to the interest of their corporate masters."

This is the business model of Brazilian TV network Rede Globo... In addition to outright fraud, crimes against the country and currently they are trying to put into practice a "white coup" (coup without the violence part). So much to the oath of journalists to display only the truth.

For your sample, pick.. let me say... 30 people. You got 30 people but you did not know they were all KKK members and now your pool says that everyone in the US is racist! Let's try to improve, but I can not have an interviewer in each city so I do phone interviews. Now looks like it will work, but in my country a good deal of people do not have phones. Oops, now my pool sees just a biased portion of the population (excluded because they have no phone). Let's try once more, spend more and put an interviewer in state capitals. But still I'm getting a biased sample because it represents only the opinions of those living in capital cities (and they have a different view of living in the countryside).

Short version: Do not come insulting me wanting to force me to believe that a sample of half a dozen people is enough to deduce the opinion of a whole country with millions of people with the most varied possible opinions.

Read the comment from mbone, is a good clue. I may be hitting you while I can claim that I'm not hitting on you, more clear now?

You are simply full of nothing, and you know that. Otherwise you would not be commenting as AC.

I suspect he is trying to justify the terrible voting intention polls that have occurred recently in Brazil. Where they interview 0.00125% of the population to know the voting intentions of the whole country, and that IF there were any interviews.

Because of the nuclear fear mongers. "All radioactive material is EVIL!!!".

LOOOLL! Perfect!

Read what I will say carefully. What II will suggest is NOT the "absolute truth", it is only a possibility.

Imagine something in "2001 Space Odyssey" style, the very beginning of the film. Some intelligence gets down here, do some experiments with the most promising species and goes away to wait for the results. A few thousand years later it returns and finds a primitive society we know as Romans, and decides to try a more direct approach. But the approach do not occur well as she expected, and its representative is killed by the natives. Then the intelligence decides to wait until the natives evolve enough to be able to a contact, perhaps a few more thousand years in the future.

Hey, take it easy! The other commenter interpreted the bible as I also think that it should be interpreted, ie as a storybook. In my humble opinion, nothing prevents the biblical characters would be aliens, because imagine how a person from that time would react when he see a being completely out of the ordinary. Even our earliest ancestors thought the sun would be a "god".

But having said that, do not think I'm saying that was exactly what happened, I'm just saying it's a good theory as any other.

He's right, and you're also right. What he wrote therefore would be better if written as follows:

"Let them wallow in their beliefs, provided they do not harm anyone by doing so".

You're right, but never forget a very important detail... When you try to force others to have the same opinion as you using physical force as a threat (or other means of force, such as defamation), is not freedom of expression anymore.

"Believe what you want as long as it does not threatens the well-being of others around you"

I read some time ago that the olfactory cells are one of the few nerve cells that maintains the ability to reproduce and create new connections, then it seems that the researchers basically created a "hard hack" with that. Interesting, and hopefully it will be applicable in many similar cases.