I can highly recommend Ben's book "Bad Science". I bought a copy for each of my family members for the holidays. It gives a very realistic overview of the current state of medical research, both from the "mainstream" and "alternative" medicine worlds.
Well, I am a statistician, too.
I hesitate to say too much about a poll where I am not privy to its final aims, but it seems quite plausible that the point of this poll was to decide who Americans admire the *most*. It looks like they got a pretty clear answer to that question. It would be very hard (i.e., require so many respondents) to design a poll powered to differentiate between each possible candidate at some alpha level.
So, I don't share your criticism of this poll as much as the summary in this article.
I've been able to stop watching almost all television, save live sports. One American football game or baseball game is about 3 hours including the breaks, so it's easy for the TV time to start adding up. I usually don't even care which team wins, I just enjoy the contest.
Living alone, I often just have the TV on while I do other things, like clean or cook.
Get ready for McLizard.
HOLY MACRO!