Democrat online band T-shirt poll hijacked

The Sedalia Democrat’s latest reader’s poll has garnered more than 6,600 votes which is 50 times more than average.

According to Editor Bob Satnan, the poll, which is posted weekly about a news topic at www.sedaliademocrat.com, normally sees about 150 votes.

The poll sought reader’s opinion on a story about Sedalia School District 200 administrators pulling T-shirts worn by the Smith-Cotton High School band after receiving complaints from parents about an “evolution” theme.

The poll titled, “Band T-shirts,” asks readers “Should the Sedalia school district have pulled the Smith-Cotton High School band T-shirts?” Three percent of voters chose, “Yes, the evolution image was inappropriate” and 97 percent opted for, “No, critics and the district are overreacting.”

The staggering number of votes prompted Satnan to temporarily pull the poll to investigate if the results were authentic. Satnan discovered a link to the poll was placed at www.scienceblogs.com/pharyngula by blog author P.Z. Myers, who is a professor at the University of Minnesota Morris.

“We had an overwhelming response from people who read scientific blogs,” Satnan said. “The poll may not reflect Sedalia’s viewpoint but it does show the global reading audience’s stance.”

After posting portions of the story on his blog, Myers posted, “I've learned that there was a poll associated with that story about the yanked evolution shirts for the Smith-Cotton band program. You must pharyngulate this poll!”

Via e-mail, Myers said he posted the story because it demonstrated poor science education in the schools.

“That story was just full of woeful ignorance on the part of teachers and students and especially administrators there,” Myers said. “It's often shocking to see how benighted some of our schools are, but Smith-Cotton High School reached a new low.”

According to www.urbandictionary.com, pharyngulate is a word created by Myers meaning to skew results of an online poll, usually having to do with religion, science, or politics, in order to reflect a more rational result or to crash an online poll by publishing its link so that large numbers of blog readers will make their opinions known there, often shifting the results dramatically.

Myers said overtaking an online poll is a common practice on his blog. “It's a regular feature of the blog: someone, somewhere puts a poll on the Internet, which will accumulate responses that someone will use to justify a position, despite the fact that these things are grossly unscientific and arbitrary,” he said. We look for such polls, and 'pharyngulating' just means that readers of the Pharyngula blog go there to vote.”

Richard DeFord, The Sedalia Democrat interactive systems manager, said Saturday’s online paper had 25,118 page views, Sunday had 22,096 and as of 4:40 p.m. Monday had 70,939.

If views continue at the current rate, DeFord said, it will reach 90,406 before the night is done. DeFord said Monday’s views indicate the story is viral, or has  become popular in a short period of time.

Of those views, many originated from as far away as London, England; Sydney and Melbourne, Australia; Dublin, Ireland; Stockholm, Sweden; Helsinki, Finland; Oslo, Norway; and Auckland, New Zealand, DeFord reported.

DeFord said 63 new users registered at the Democrat’s Web site over the weekend. Readers are required to register to leave comments on the stories.