You don't need a lab coat or a peer reviewed paper to do science. Science is just a method of figuring things out, of discovering bits of evidence that points in various directions, and YES twitter polls *are bits of evidence.*
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They're not perfect evidence, ofc - most of the people who answer my polls are white males 25-35 years old, so we can't call it a random sample - but tons of "science with a lab coat" gets a pass despite having worse sampling biases (and way lower sample sizes) than I do!
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I *regularly* spot check my polls for accuracy. Sometimes I do two sets of polls - with just question A (e.g., politically right or left?) and then again adding in question B (e.g. do you value freedom or safety?) to see how much A answers change due to priming.
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I also do series of polls to test the troll ratio, and have found troll answers increase significantly the less the answer has to do with personal identity; e.g., a series of increasingly complex math problems has *more* correct answers the more complex it gets.
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Does this address all flaws? No! But evidence doesn't have to address all potential flaws, it just has to be evaluated in context. Plenty of research is done on way less reliable samples and nobody gives a shit cause it's done by credentialed people writing in the passive voice
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I personally use my polls as light bits of evidence pointing in directions that might be useful to research more, kinda pilot-study-esque. Like, this poll is *so cool*, it's fascinating evidence pointing heavily in a direction we'd be amiss to ignore!
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Do you have chronic anxiety? || Do you have stomach problems (like IBS, constipation/diarrhea, etc.)?
Show this poll
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The people who call my polls unscientific have a really limited idea of what science. It's all around us, and it can be informal or unassuming or outright goofy, but as long as you're *finding bits of evidence and not overinterpreting* then congrats, you're doing science!
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This 'science aesthetic is science' flaw is one of the things that bothers me the most about the way we culturally approach learning, and I'm planning on stabbing it in the face in a lot more detail in the book I'm attempting to write.
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You could ask a few traditional scientists for feedback and then reflect on that. Your stuff is certainly valuable, but i wouldnt put it on the same level with a serious scientific research.
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Asking a question in a right way is a science itself, and comparing a 140-character question that came up while standing in a traffic jam, has its limits. It certainly brings value, but your audience is very specific, you might be biased in many topics - your conclusions are
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I mean i've done over 3700 polls at this point and got to see all the incredible ways people manage to misinterpret all the wording. I might have some of the world's top experience at rapidly iterating questions and getting feedback on how people interpret it by this point
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True and I dont take that from you, the question is, how did you steer your way to reiterate your questions and did it bring you closer to being objective? Or just closer to your bias or initial assumption, or to some other result that seemed interesting enough?
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