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November 6th, 2026 (Permalink)

Outsmarting an Economist

Consider the following quote from a book I've been reading:

…[W]e're…given the…information that when he's poorer, he eats fewer kidneys. (Actually we're told that when he's richer, he eats more kidneys, but that comes down to the same thing.)1

Does it actually come down to the same thing? No, you might just as well say that when he's growing, he's getting older comes down to the same thing as when he's not growing, he's getting younger. To return to the example, it might be that he likes kidneys so much that losing money has no effect on his kidney-eating―maybe he cuts back on liver so that he can afford them. Alternatively, when he gets poorer he might even increase his kidney consumption to console himself over his loss of wealth. We need more context to determine what effect decreasing wealth might have on his diet.

This is an example of an improper transposition2, that is, treating a statement of the form When A then B as logically equivalent to the statement When not A then not B.

Now, if his getting richer varies directly with the amount of kidneys he eats3, then what the quote says would be true. I suspect that this may have been what the author was thinking when he wrote the above passage, but what it says is logically weaker.

By the way, despite the above error, the book has been very interesting so far.

Notes:

  1. ↑ Steven E. Landsburg, Can You Outsmart an Economist? (2018), p. 56. Who "he" refers to here is not relevant to the logical point, but it's not Hannibal Lector.
  2. ↑ Improper Transposition.
  3. ↑ Bryan Bunch & Jenny Tesar, The Penguin Desk Dictionary of Science and Mathematics (2000), under "direct variation".
October 31st, 2026 (Permalink)

A Headline for Hallowe'en

New Genus of Nightmare Spaghetti Worms Found Deep Under the Indian Ocean*

Creepy pasta?

*Michelle Starr, "New Genus of Nightmare Spaghetti Worms Found Deep Under The Indian Ocean", Science Alert, 10/18/2026

October 29th, 2026 (Permalink)

Weasel Words Ripped My Flesh

What are weasel words? First things first: what is a weasel? A weasel is a type of carnivorous mammal, related to ferrets and polecats. Weasels are long and thin with short legs, and so able to hunt animals such as rabbits and voles in their burrows1.

Weasels have a bad reputation, presumably because they will eat chickens if they can catch them, which has led farmers to consider them pests. Given their lithe physiques, weasels are difficult to capture or keep out of places such as hen houses, because they can squeeze through small openings.

Some myths have sprung up about weasels: one is that they are the only animal, other than human beings, to kill for sport. This myth comes from the habit of weasels killing every chicken in a hen house, but they are one of the few carnivores, other than humans, to store meat for later consumption. So, weasels don't kill for sport but to stock the larder.

In addition to chickens, weasels also will eat their eggs, which has led to a myth that is relevant to the phrase "weasel words", namely, that a weasel will bite a small hole in an egg and suck out its contents, leaving an intact but empty egg. The myth goes back at least to Shakespeare, who alludes to the legend in two plays2. This seems to be an "old wives' tale" since weasels will indeed eat eggs, but they don't suck them3.

What do weasels have to do with words? If you're like me, you'll suspect that the phrase "weasel words" comes from the slang use of the word "weasel" for a type of person, with "weasel words" referring to the kind of words used by such a person. However, the phrase "weasel words" seems to have arisen independently of the slang sense of "weasel" to refer to an insidious, cunning, and dishonest person, though no doubt such human weasels do indeed use weasel words. Instead, as we shall see, the phrase "weasel words" came from the legend that weasels suck eggs.

Weasel words are sometimes equated with doublespeak, or considered a type of doublespeak4. The concept of doublespeak originated last century as a result of the totalitarianism of both left and right that spread over much of the globe. It was not that language had never been perverted for political reasons previously―for instance, the Greek historian Thucydides had written about the way words changed their meanings during the Peloponnesian War5. While there had been dictatorships as long as there had been governments, totalitarianism was something new: a government that sought total control over its citizens' lives including education, communication, and language itself6.

While totalitarianism came into existence before the end of the first world war, at about the same time as the phrase "weasel words" was coined, the word "doublespeak" came later. However, both were born in a non-totalitarian, democratic nation, namely, the United States of America, which is not surprising given that totalitarian states do not allow criticism. I'm not sure who coined the word "doublespeak", but it was popularized by the linguist William Lutz in a series of books published in the 1980s and '90s7.

"Doublespeak" appears to be a portmanteau word created by combining "doublethink" with "Newspeak", both of which were coined by George Orwell in his 1949 novel Nineteen Eighty-Four8. So, "doublespeak" itself must have been coined sometime after Orwell's novel was published, and the earliest published occurrences of the word that I've been able to locate were in the 1970s9.

Theodore Roosevelt has been credited with the phrase "weasel words"10 but, as we will see, he just popularized it. Instead, Stewart Chaplin may have coined the phrase11. "Who is Stewart Chaplin?" you might ask, which is why Teddy gets the credit. In any case, the use of "weasel words" for weaselly language appears to have originated early in the previous century.

I'll examine the convoluted history of "weasel words" in the next entry in this series. Stay tuned.

Notes:

  1. ↑ "Weasel", Britannica, 10/10/2026.
  2. ↑ As You Like It, 2:5 & Henry V, 1:2.
  3. ↑ "Weasels", Genuine Mustelids, 9/27/2026.
  4. ↑ William Lutz seems to consider weasel words a type of doublespeak in his seminal book Doublespeak (1989), pp. 85-99 & 102.
  5. ↑ Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, Book III, Ch. X.
  6. ↑ "Totalitarianism", Britannica, accessed: 10/28/2026.
  7. ↑ William Lutz, Doublespeak (1989), The New Doublespeak (1996) & Doublespeak Defined (1999).
  8. ↑ George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), See ch. 3 for "doublethink" and the Appendix, "The Principles of Newspeak".
  9. ↑ "Doublespeak" was probably also influenced by the pre-existing word or phrase "double-talk", meaning equivocal fast talk or intentionally amusing gibberish.
  10. ↑ John Ciardi, A Second Browser's Dictionary (1981), under "weasel". Ciardi does not himself attribute it to TR, but mentions that a revised edition of Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable did. My edition of Brewer's―the Centenary Edition, Revised―gets it right.
  11. ↑ Stewart Chaplin, "The Stained-Glass Political Platform", The Century Magazine, 1912, p. 305.
October 23rd, 2026 (Updated: 10/25/2026) (Permalink)

More Fake Polls

Just two months ago, there was an unprecedented case of a "pollster" who faked polls1. The fake pollster in question claimed that the hoax was a "social experiment" intended to show how polling misinformation can spread without independent verification―it certainly showed that it can spread a little, but its spread was soon halted and the polls exposed as hoaxes. This was a heartening result.

Now, another "pollster" has revealed that it also faked recent polling results, giving the same excuse for doing so as in the previous case. This one was called "Wedgewood Polls" (WP) and it seems to have had more success at fooling people than the previous one, Median Strategies (MS), which turned out to be just one 21-year-old recent college graduate with no obvious polling background. MS produced just three fake polls whereas WP seems to have put out seventeen2.

In the case of MS, I could find only one minor California publication that reported one of its fake polls. WP, in contrast, took in several major publications, including Newsweek, which had to retract three articles and correct additional ones3. This is discouraging news.

In addition to news sites, several polling aggregators―outfits that average multiple poll results―included WP's fake polls, thus skewing their averages. As far as I know, no aggregator included MS' results in its averages. I've recommended polling aggregators in the past4, because averaging can mitigate against the biases of individual pollsters and the occasional outlier result. I still do recommend them, but they obviously need to be more vigilant before adding the results of new pollsters to their averages and, after this debacle, I expect they will be.

I don't know how much WP's fake polls affected the aggregators' results, or the general perception of the candidates' popularity, but at least one candidate has claimed that one of WP's fake polls sabotaged her campaign. In the case of MS, I speculated that the motive behind the so-called social experiment might have been to create a bandwagon effect5. Given that two out of three of its fake results heavily favored Democrats―I haven't been able to find out about the third one―they look like an attempt at a bandwagon for the Democratic candidates. If it were actually a "social experiment", one would expect the results to split evenly between the two major parties; when all or most of the phony polls favor one party, and that heavily, that's a strong reason to suspect an intentional effort to affect public opinion.

Similarly, WP's faked results seem to have been calculated to promote Democratic candidates. Left-leaning news site Slate6 writes:

Over the past few months, an upstart political polling firm kept delivering good news for Democrats―and especially those on the left. Across more than a dozen surveys, it found progressives leading in key primary races and showed other Democrats in striking distance of winning traditionally Republican states. … Wedgewood claims its deception "was never intended to sway an election or permanently mislead the public," but it may also have wanted to make certain Democrats look more electable….7

In both these cases, the pseudo-pollsters were facing imminent exposure when they 'fessed up, which looks like they got caught trying to influence elections with bogus polling results and then gave the "experiment" excuse.

If this trend of hoaxed polls continues, just imagine what the polling leading up to the general election is going to be like two years from now. Polling is already in disrepute and the last thing its reputation needs is a spate of fake polls. If there's just one more polling hoax this year I'm going to decide, in accordance with Goldfinger's Principle8, that it's enemy action.

Update, 10/25/2026: That was fast! The polling outfit SoCal Strategies (SS) has disappeared in much the same way as Median Strategies and Wedgewood Polls before it9: its website now returns a 404 error page, and its social media presence seems also to have been removed. So, it must have been engaged in some kind of shenanigans―why else suddenly disappear? However, as I write, we don't know exactly what kind of mischief it was up to.

As in the case of the previous two polling "firms", SS was under recent scrutiny due to some dubious polls when it decided to do a bunk, which is as much as an admission that something was wrong with those polls. In contrast with MS and WP, both of which were new outfits, SS was a comparative veteran. Both MS and WP started up in the middle of this year, whereas SS had been polling since at least 2024, and may have been a reputable pollster at that time.

Strangely, SS shut down in May of this year, but then continued to release three supposed polls, so it was a zombie pollster. It was these polls that were suspicious enough to inspire the inquiry that led it to turn off the lights, lock the doors, and flee without leaving a forwarding address.10

We've seen that the faked polls put out by both MS and WP favored Democratic candidates, sometimes heavily; what about the three "polls" put out by SS since its closure in May? The first of these, dealing with the Michigan senate race, was released at the end of July and showed Democratic candidate Haley Stevens two percentage points ahead of Republican Mike Rogers11. Real Clear Polling's (RCP) average currently has Stevens ahead by only 1.7 percentage points12, so SS' result was right on the money.

The remaining two "polls" were released in mid-September and both concerned the state of Texas. In the state's senate race, SS showed the Democratic candidate, James Talarico, five percentage points ahead of the Republican, Ken Paxton. RCP's average for the same date had Talarico ahead by only 2.7 percentage points, so SS' result was on the high side but not unreasonably so13. Finally, in the Governor's race, SS had the Republican candidate ahead by eight points, while RCP's average leans in the same direction by only 3.4 points. Again, a little extreme but in the right direction14.

A person connected to WP was a former employee of SS, so at least those two "pollsters" were related to each other. It's hard to believe that it's just a coincidence that three different outfits have disappeared within a couple of months of each other. In accordance with Goldfinger's Principle, my working hypothesis is that these three "pollsters" were connected and probably working in concert to move the polling aggregators' averages, either to create a bandwagon effect or to make money in the prediction markets.

Just as the "social experiment" explanation doesn't explain why the thumbs of MS and WP were on the scale of the Democrats, neither does the hypothesis that they were trying to manipulate prediction markets, since they could do so just as well by putting their thumbs on the other scale. So, those results favor the bandwagon hypothesis. However, at this point, we don't know exactly what was wrong with SS' polls, and the results don't support either hypothesis, since they were neither skewed towards one party, nor skewed heavily enough to have influenced the markets.

This is now clearly a crisis for the polling industry, and all of the polls for the upcoming midterm election need to be taken with a shaker of salt. Given what's happened in the last couple of months, who knows whether other polls and pollsters will turn out to be fakes? The legitimate polling organizations―if there are any left―need to start an emergency investigation and clean house if they want to restore confidence in their industry.

Notes:

  1. ↑ Straw Polls, 8/21/2026.
  2. ↑ Natalie Jackson, "Fake polls, real polls, and the state of the industry", Stuck in the Middle, 10/22/2026.
  3. ↑ The Editors, "Fake Polling Firm Duped Media in 'Social Experiment'", Newsweek, 10/21/2026.
  4. ↑ How to Read a Poll: Polling the Polls, 10/28/2024.
  5. ↑ Walter Veit, "What Is the Bandwagon Effect?", Psychology Today, 3/14/2020.
  6. ↑ "Slate―Bias and Credibility", Media Bias/Fact Check, 12/20/2024.
  7. ↑ Ian Prasad Philbrick, "There's a 100 Percent Chance These Polls Are Fake", Slate, 10/22/2026.
  8. ↑ Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, but the third time it's enemy action. See: Ian Fleming, Goldfinger (1959), epigraph.
  9. ↑ Natalia Mittelstadt, "Polling firm disappears amid media questioning surveys, employees", Fox 11 News, 10/22/2026.
  10. ↑ Zachary Leeman, "Polling Company Goes Dark as Investigative Report Suggests They're Yet Another Fake", Mediaite, 10/22/2026.
  11. ↑ "SoCal Strategies", Polling Source, accessed: 10/25/2026.
  12. ↑ "2026 Michigan Senate―Rogers vs. Stevens", Real Clear Polling, accessed: 10/25/2026.
  13. ↑ "2026 Texas Senate―Paxton vs. Talarico", Real Clear Polling, accessed: 10/25/2026.
  14. ↑ "2026 Texas Governor―Abbott vs. Hinojosa", Real Clear Polling, accessed: 10/25/2026.
Spinner
October 21st, 2026 (Permalink)

There's a Sucker Born Every Second1

On a cool autumn day, Montgomery Banks2 was back at the carnival, and this time he had a spinner on top of his counter. The circular face of the spinner was divided into two sections, as shown: a large red section, making up three-fourths of the spinner's face, and a small green section accounting for the remaining one-fourth of the face. Attached to the center of the spinner was a rotating pointer.

"Step right up, sir or madam, as the case may be," he said to the crowd strolling past his booth, "and take it for a spin. Looky here, this spinner is completely fair and you can even spin it yourself. If you do and the arrow stops on the green section, you win a dollar; if it stops on the red section, you lose a dollar.

"Now, I know what you're thinking. There's only a one-quarter chance of you winning a spin, which means there's a three-quarter chance of losing, but I'm offering you an even-money bet. That ain't a fair bet, is it? No, sir.

"I tell you what I'm gonna do: If you don't win on the first spin, I'll let you try again, and if it stops in the green the second time, you win a buck. That's right, a second spin at no additional charge! That's two spins for a buck, and if you get in the green on either spin, you win. Two times one-quarter is one-half, so that's a fair bet, ain't it?"

Is the bet that Monty's offering fair at even money? Would you be a "sucker" to take the bet?

Extra Credit: If the bet is not fair, what is the real probability that the player will win?

Notes:

  1. ↑ They used to say "There's a sucker born every minute", but since then there's been sucker inflation. The original quote is routinely attributed―to paraphrase Ralph Keyes―to P. T. Barnum, though he probably didn't say it; see: Keyes, The Quote Verifier: Who Said What, Where, and When (2006), p. 215.
  2. ↑ In case you don't know Monty, he is a trickster who always speaks the truth and nothing but the truth, but he seldom speaks the whole truth. Also, he never uses sleight-of-hand or gimmicks of any kind. For previous puzzles involving Monty, see:
Puzzle
September 30th, 2026 (Permalink)

Pop Quiz

Assuming that the following statements are either true of false, which if any are true?

  1. All of the statements below are true.
  2. None of the statements below is true.
  3. All of the statements above are true.
  4. Only one of the statements above is true.
  5. None of the statements above is true.
  6. None of the statements above is true.

September 18th, 2026 (Permalink)

This Headline Sucks

I was puzzled by the following headline:

Ryanair will dispute passenger's claim he was sucked out of window1

What puzzled me about this headline is how anyone who was actually sucked out of the window of an airplane could claim anything. This could only happen at high altitude because the cabin is pressurized when a plane is at such an altitude that the atmosphere is becoming too thin2. If cabin pressurization is suddenly lost at such an altitude, which would happen if a window failed, the difference in pressure between the cabin and the atmosphere outside the plane could suck someone through the window3. At such an altitude, if a passenger were pulled out of the window, he would surely fall to his death unless he was wearing a parachute. Assuming that the passenger wasn't actually sucked out of the window, what did he claim?

Despite the headline, and as we learn in the article beneath, the passenger claims only that his head and shoulders were sucked out of the window, while his wife held on to his legs to keep him from going completely out. The airline, Ryanair, is counter-claiming that no part of him was ever outside the window; why that matters is not clear.

No doubt brevity is important in headlines but not at the expense of accuracy. There was no necessity for the editor who wrote the above headline to give the impression that a man survived being sucked through an airplane window, as other editors were able to write headlines for their coverage of the same story that included the adverbs "almost", "nearly", or "partially" to modify the verb phrase "sucked out"4. In particular, The Grauniad itself, from which the above headline was taken, managed to get it right a couple of months earlier:

Ryanair passenger almost sucked out of shattered window during flight5

Despite its unlikeliness, I wondered whether anyone ever survived being sucked out of an airplane window. Here's another headline that sucks:

Yes, a Pilot Really Did Survive Being Sucked Out of an Airplane in 19906

No, Snopes, he really didn't. If you read the article beneath the headline―which I recommend as it's quite fascinating―you find out that the pilot wasn't sucked out of the plane. Like the man in the more recent story, he was partially sucked through the window while other crewmembers held onto his legs until the plane was able to land. If he had gone all the way through the window, he would surely have been killed.

It's rather disappointing that Snopes, of all sites, ran such a tabloid-style headline for its story. I was excited to read how someone was sucked out of a plane by explosive decompression yet somehow survived the fall, only to discover it was much the same story as the Ryanair one.

I've found no evidence that anyone sucked completely out of a pressurized airplane cabin has ever survived. Those who lived through a violent decompression were saved by neighbors who held onto them. Thankfully, such cabin decompressions are so rare that you're more likely to die from drinking the piping hot airline coffee―see the previous entry. Whether the tiny risk of being sucked out of the plane is worth choosing an aisle seat and wearing your seatbelt while in flight, I'll let you decide.

Notes:

  1. ↑ Gwyn Topham, "Ryanair will dispute passenger's claim he was sucked out of window", The Grauniad, 9/10/2026
  2. ↑ "Ask an Explainer", How Things Fly, 4/14/2012
  3. ↑ Jacopo Prisco, "What happens when an airplane cabin suddenly depressurizes?", CNN, 1/14/2024
  4. ↑ Here are some examples:
  5. ↑ Mark Sweney, "Ryanair passenger almost sucked out of shattered window during flight", The Grauniad, 7/10/2026
  6. ↑ Dan MacGuill, "Yes, a Pilot Really Did Survive Being Sucked Out of an Airplane in 1990", Snopes, 3/29/2023

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