Debunking the Debunkers

Well it appears we have stirred up a hornet’s nest and it is show time in defending our long held theories.  I think my first salvo should shape the debate before the argument detracts to a point that we are not arguing about the same facts.  For the liberal press this called "Prepping the battlefield."

 

This is necessary after only one week, because the first "Naught uh" article not only used severally broad terms but tried to change the debate to whether the CONTENT listed by Google was biased and not the method of ranking content.  Using Kerry and Bush as a test pattern they put up graphs and charts then determined bias based on their opinion. (This is the Online Journalism Review).  Liberals testing for liberal bias is like a fox guarding the hen house with the other foxes keeping tally on how many eggs and/or chickens where really in there and can you every really prove the chicken existed once its gone.

 

By the time we reach the respect WebProNews.com report we are already 3 levels away from the source of the information being tested.  The Webpronews quoted http://www.OJR.org who failed to inform their readers of the full thought process of the original work which comes from a College thesis (College what’s that liberal conservative ration 98-2 or 96-4 the numbers conflict so lets just say OVERWHELMING liberal thought by those handing out a grade).  That thesis is a 25 page PDF found at http://www.ulken.com/thesis/googlenews-bias-study.pdf written by Erick Ulken for his School of communication thesis. (That means liberal to the second power right college and communications major)

 

Mr. Ulken's thesis statement discredits his ability to observe bias before he even begins the study.  I quote from his thesis

 

"Given what Lasica and others have reported about Google News search results, the goal of this study is to prove or disprove quantitatively the assertion that Google News displays a conservative bias."

 

 This statement assumes a position that the perspective is that Google is too conservative and he will attempt to prove the truth given that assertion.   His study was done on May 5 of 2005 so this leads me to believe he has read more than a little of the work we have done in the past few months whether he knows it or not. 

 

First you must separate the train of thought from the algorithm of the search.  They are two separate topics.  Therefore you can't argue them to the same point even though you may want to.  To claim that Google's Robot crawl is bias is absurd in the least.   It's about the mathematical formula that was ignored completely by this thesis.  Plus the sloppy methods of data mining for his thesis  was  completely improper to the point he was trying to prove.

 

Again I quote from his thesis in the Appendix A on how to determine bias:

 

" If a unit contains both favorable and unfavorable references to the same candidate, or it contains only favorable or unfavorable references to both candidates, it should be coded neutral." 

 

So if Bush is a Sorry liar but has nice hair.  That is "Neutral" by this standard.  When examining references most AP articles which represent 76% and 60% of the searches tested Yahoo and Google respectively.  Use a journalistic standard of not trashing a topic from top to bottom.  Using statements like " Ignorant on foreign policy but good communication with the people" is considered Neutral reporting in this thesis. 

 

Now its not my intent to trash this young mans work, definity hope he didn't get an A for his work, but his limited insight to the problem is based from a perspective of the content of the pages themselves and not an acknowledgement of ranking based on overall activity of a website.  This is a product of his Communication training for print, video and radio media and not on the web.  Whats the difference? Marketing. The first 3 Market and promote for viewer share, while the internet optimizes each page of content and not the whole platform as whole, while some of that exists, not the primary factor.  Dot.com's bust trying to apply real world marketing techniques to virtual business.

 

My Generalized Dispute

 

When Google and Yahoo allow Pornography to buy advertising but refuse firearms they are making a political statement and its not a conservative one.  When they sell ads to George Soros to trash U.N. Candidate Bolton but refuse ad space to the GOP which copied word for word the advertisement and change the names on the ad to prove their point.  It starts to become a slam dunk.

 

Using the Elite media policy of referring to a think tank of thought to determine direction of content.  Google and Yahoo use the same technique by referencing a point of their "Crawler algorithm" which defers back to human intervention platform” Google uses the DMOZ and Yahoo uses their own hand-checked directory.  Which Firearm sites avoided like the plague after the $300 review scam, Yahoo for $300 will think about but won't guarantee that their monopoly of information will tell folks you exist.  Which had 30,000 dealers putting up money and only 113 getting listed in 7 years.  Of those 113 only 12 actually are firearm retailers, most are distributors and manufactures (prohibited from selling direct to consumers by law), some are Curios and relics dealers, which is an obscure license format.  You will also note there are no sponsored listings in this portion of the directory. http://dir.yahoo.com/Business_and_Economy/Shopping_and_Services/Weapons/Firearms/Retailers/

 

In recent debate with a gentleman online, sparked the words at me "conspiracy theory" where he threw the word bomb stating that Conspiracy theorists see patterns where there are none.  Alluding to me of course, and my response was a simple one.  "This is math, it's an algorithm. The problem is there is no pattern where there should be one."

 

So the debate that we are holding is not about the content of what is on top at this point. Its about the content that is allowed to be on top.  By disallowing sponsored listings the direct control over those who search for “guns” and those who would buy the word “Guns” has been stripped and left to an algorithm.  That algorithm is based on a human intervention number which CAN be overcome but is hard to do based on where the value is set on placement in the hand checked and often unmanned directories.

 

I mean I didn't even know George Soros wrote a book until I wrote this article.  Let alone that Google promotes it for free.  Why are Rush Limbaugh’s books not listed. Bill O'reilly?