"Gallup’s editor-in-chief Frank Newport wrote in an email published Monday by Politico that “a blue ribbon group of outside experts” is conducting a review of the firm’s “methodological issues” during the 2012 election."
No surprise there. Gallup had the worst polling performance in the 2012 presidential election (see here) What was a bit surprising was this metaphor later in the article.
"Weeks after the election, Newport wrote a post on the firm’s website in which he defended Gallup’s findings and appeared to take a thinly veiled shot at polling aggregators. “Individual farmers can each make a perfectly rational decision to graze their cows on the town commons,” Gallup wrote. “But all of these rational decisions together mean that the commons becomes overgrazed and, in the end, there is no grass left for any cow to graze. Many individual rational decisions can end up in a collective mess.” "
He seems to be referring to the tragedy of the commons (kind of). From Wikipedia
"In economics, the tragedy of the commons is the depletion of a shared resource by individuals, acting independently and rationally according to each one's self-interest, despite their understanding that depleting the common resource is contrary to the group's long-term best interests...The enclosure movement in England (which led to over 5000 Inclosure Acts between 1750 and 1860) prompted the analysis of this economic principle, probably known to Adam Smith.[1] In 1833 William Forster Lloyd published a pamphlet concerning European land tenure, specifically of herders sharing a common parcel of land, on which they are each entitled to let their cows graze. By this time, the English spinning and cloth-making industry had created an increased demand for wool. In English villages (as with mountain countries in Europe), shepherds had sometimes grazed their sheep in common areas, and sheep ate grass more severely than cows. Overgrazing could result because for each additional sheep, a herder could receive benefits, while the group shared damage to the commons. If all herders made this individually rational economic decision, the common could be depleted or even destroyed, to the detriment of all."
It's not clear exactly how that metaphor applies to the Gallup situation. A more apt metaphor for the current situation might be
"Farmer George makes a decision to plant his crops too close together. The other farmers tell him his plants won't grow well like that. Farmer George tells them he knows what he is doing and they are all wrong. When harvest time comes Farmer George gets a lousy crop yield. He then announces that he will convene a panel of agricultural experts to look into why his crop yield was poor. He finishes his pronouncement by incorrectly stating a metaphor about sheep and cows."
No comments:
Post a Comment