I think we have several phenomena here that need to be distinguished.
One is the hiding away of nonsensical questions in otherwise sensible questionnaires (eg Wisian-Americans), which is kinda unfair and could trip up most of us on a bad day.
A second is fishing for zealots – in the OP’s example, the subject word* immigration* will, on its own, push the buttons of plenty of readers.
Third - the polling of pure nonsense is harder to get a handle on, but it would be the most interesting to have more info on. Something that isn’t politically sensitive, isn’t concealed as part of something meaningful, and is genuinely gibberish. I’m inclined to think you’d still get uptake.
Elsewhere: On the subject of zealots, in the UK we share your enthusiasm for the democratic right to start a barking mad petition on a government website. In the interests of – Jesus, I don’t know - I’ve just spent a depressing half hour sorting out for you some of the prime bottom feeders in the national debate. After that degree of distress, you’re going to see this whether you like it or not:
Introduce the British Empire as a mandatory part of the Key Stage 3 curriculum*
Ban the sale of White poppies alongside the British Legion red poppy campaign.*
Commission a statue of Enoch Powell to be placed outside Parliament*
Introduce a law to fit microchips in every ammunition round produced in the UK
Lift the ban on hand guns and allow everyone to own any firearm.
Get Mrs May to resign because of her treason to our country
Make soap dispensers at cash points compulsory!
The N.H.S should fund properly regulated homeopathy clinics.
There, I hope that makes you feel better.
What’s crazy about this? Shouldn’t kids be informed about a major part of our recent history and the reason quite a few countries around the world are still pissed off with us?
Fair point. I think by that stage I had been beaten down by all the crazies I had to wade through. Actually not just crazies - it’s the* earnestness* that gets to you.
No. If you’re going to try to be pedantic, don’t be wrong.
You can refer to someone as an emigrant from X to Y; or as an immigrant from X to Y. Which you would say would depend on what’s relevant in context.
When you’re discussing who we might allow to immigrate into the U.S., it’s quite correct to refer to them as immigrants from X or immigrants from Y. It would be odd to refer to them in that context as emigrants from X or emigrants from Y, since we’re not concerned with their emigration from their home countries per se, maybe they might go from the Islets of Langerhans to Japan. The concern is who is allowed into the U.S.
The Lizardman’s constant is the idea that in any survey there is a minimum response to any survey of the public, no matter how nonsensical the answer is. The constant is usually around 5%.
There is also the fact that a certain amount of people will be fooled by a question and answer it anyway. Thus you can get support for banning dihydrogen monoxide or woman’s suffrage.
Never, ever underestimate the ignorance of the average man.
I was at a shooting range one time, and I joked to one of the range officers that they needed a “brass magnet” to clean up all of the cases littering the floor.
He quite seriously replied that they couldn’t afford one…
I think the intent was always to remain respectful to the war dead, but to indicate a pacifist perspective. Some people didn’t see it that way, famously Maggie Thatcher. Unpatriotic or something I guess.
This has some relevance to the OP’s point (or in other words, organise things so that your question won’t be seen as silly once you ask it, and you won’t get a silly answer):
Riemann is bang on. Just to add that there a lot of petitions of this general tenor. We live in a country with more than a sufficiency of angry, shouty people who decorate themselves with union flags and are outraged at any divergence from their viewpoint.
Yes, magnets don’t work on brass, but that hasn’t stopped someone from creating something named that: “The BRASS MAGNET® is a 100″x 144″ nylon mesh brass collection net…” as found by Google. Something that large may be out of the budget of the range.
