Comments on: Japan News for January 11, 2007

By: Japanese attitudes to whaling » 世論 What Japan Thinks - Japanese Opinion Polls, Marketing Data and Japanese Market Research Translated into English

Fri, 12 Jan 2007 00:34:16 +0000

[...] I noticed via Japan Probe, via Scoop NZ, that there was a press release issued by the Institute Of Cetacean Research, which, if Wikipedia’s article is to be trusted, is basically not much more than a front for the Japanese government for justifying whaling. In the press release there is much statistical jiggery-pokery that I shall try to get to the bottom of. In November 2006, Internet giant Yahoo Japan held an online poll that showed 90 percent public support for a return to commercial whaling. In the recent poll, 21,221 people cast a vote, with 19,001 agreeing with sustainable commercial whaling and 2220 opposed. In Japanese only: http://polls.dailynews.yahoo.co.jp [...]

By: 世論 What Japan Thinks

世論 What Japan Thinks — Thu, 11 Jan 2007 12:15:07 +0000

Japanese attitudes to whaling…

I noticed via Japan Probe, via Scoop NZ, that there was a press release issued by the Institute Of Cetacean Research, which, if Wikipedia’s article is to be trusted, is basically not much more than a front for the Japanese government for justif…

By: Ken Y-N

Ken Y-N — Thu, 11 Jan 2007 00:31:11 +0000

Oops, I see it’s a press release verbatim from The Institute Of Cetacean Research http://www.icrwhale.org/eng-index.htm (firewalled at work!), a J government-funded organisation.

By: Ken Y-N

Ken Y-N — Thu, 11 Jan 2007 00:28:06 +0000

Uggh, that’s a terrible translation by that NZ paper of the Japanese poll, which is more like “Do you support Iceland’s unilateral resumption of commercial whaling?”.

And of course, we all know how reliable online polls are, especially public ones where if you have cookies turned off you can vote multiple times.

And the poll was conducted in October, not November! I’ll write to the NZ paper and complain.