A "Brauny" Analysis of Survey Ethics

I normally don't do phone surveys. They're tedious and tend to have pretty lame questions. Especially frustrating is when none of the answers really fit or the question doesn't provide adequate information to give a meaningful answer. In short, they're annoying.

At 5:55pm last night, my phone rang, displaying the number 609-279-0220. I didn't recognize it, but, for whatever reason, decided to answered anyway. A woman's voice greeted me, introducing herself and her organization: Braun Research, a company that conducts surveys on behalf of third parties. I found myself the lucky participant of a phone survey.

Splendid.

Un-Homeopathic Sleeping Tablets

This past weekend, February 5-6, rationally-minded people all over the world committed homeopathic suicide.  But wait!  How could such an act be rational?  Well, it was part of activities organized by the 10:23 campaign to show people that there really is nothing in homeopathy.  To do this, skeptics gathered and consumed entire bottles of homeopathic pills.

With real medicine, such an action would be inadvisable in the extreme, likely leading to very serious adverse effects, including permanent disability or even death.  In short, a bad idea.  Homeopathy's different, though.  See, homeopathic pills are almost entirely sugar and, if proper procedures of dilution are adhered to, contain zero molecules of the active ingredient.

Well, I took a look at one such homeopathic product that was used this weekend: Calms Forte Sleep Aid.

Age of Autism Owes Me a New Irony Meter

So, I heard about some rumors that Age of Autism had their Facebook account removed. Out of curiosity, I wandered over to their main blog page. As I scrolled down just a bit, I saw something that caused my irony meter to go sproing!

There was a post title "Even the Kids Know" consisting solely of a picture and a caption.

Here's a screen shot:

Comedy Central's Vaccine Two-fer

Last night, January 31, 2011, Comedy Central had a rather refreshing two-fer regarding vaccines. With all of the media attention surrounding the fraud allegations against Andrew Wakefield, stories about communicable, vaccine-preventable diseases popping up and now this double-whammy, it seems that there is a sort of tide shift taking place in the popular media and public opinions. True, the anti-vaccine movement really represents a fringe group of individuals, loud and extremely vocal though they may be, but this shift, I think, is a very good thing, raising public awareness of just what is happening and, hopefully, swaying fence-sitters toward reason and reality.

Now, on to the videos, after the break.