You know that there are people who believe truly crazy things that conflict with everything we actually know, in fact, thanks to the Internet we are awash with all sorts of claims that pop up each day, hollow earth, aliens, miracles, bigfoot, etc… the list is almost endless.
Anyway, to mark the release of Jurassic World, we have a fun little survey that was run by YouGov and polled 1,000 people in the US between 15-17 June. The results are quite jaw dropping …
To translate, add up the 14% definitely with the 27% Probably and that gives you a total of 41% who appear to seriously consider the idea the The Flintstones is a documentary. It is actually worse than 41%, let’s not forget that another 16% were not sure.
Is this a real poll?
Yes the poll itself is indeed real to some extent, the full results are here, the highlights are here, and the write-up on YouGov is here.
Oh but wait, there is no statement of who sponsored them to run this poll, but with a picture taken from Jurassic World, the release of the movie, and a heavy emphases being placed upon the Jurassic World movie in the questions, it is not exactly a huge leap to work out that this “poll” has been contrived to provoke a bit of advertising for the movie by motivating people (like me, have I just been suckered) to write about it.
The stunning absence of any statement regarding who sponsored this, a complete lack of any explanation of how they selected the 1,000 people they polled, along with the very heavy emphases upon Jurassic World, all shouts rather loudly that this is designed to be a viral movie ad, so no, I really can’t accept this poll as an accurate measure.
Sigh!
… and so yet another bit of modern folklore is born – a belief that 41% of the US population give credence to the idea that the Flintstones is a documentary. There are of course people who do indeed believe such things and I quite honestly don’t know what percentage actually do, and no this poll does not really answer that, but I can assure you that it is not 41%.
If you are still considering taking the numbers from this poll seriously, then consider this – I could also create a similar poll by standing outside a museum to ask a random selection of 1,000 people the exact same questions. I would get a good cross-section of the population, different genders, races, ages, and locations, but greatly different results if the Museum I was standing outside was the Creation Museum in Kentucky or the Smithsonian in Washington. It would tell you nothing at all about what the wider population actually thinks, but would tell you a great deal about how polls can be manipulated to yield the result the sponsor wants.
Bottom Line: Don’t take it seriously, it’s just a movie ad.
There is another problem with the wording of the poll: birds are dinosaurs.