On 2013-05-22 22:11, Jed Rothwell wrote:
Ah! I did not think of that. That is probably a good metric. It is
still self-selected, and not a random group, but the extremists will
have only one vote each. If the number of likes is sufficiently high I
guess the effects of extremists at both ends would be diluted.
I guess what you are saying is that we can look at articles which are
generally in favor of cold fusion and compare them to ones that attack
it, and see which is more popular with Facebook. If they are both
published about the same time that should be a valid comparison. We
would be looking at the opinions of the general public rather than
academic scientists, but it would be useful information.
Yes, with Facebook likes you would mainly see how much popular a story
is in the general public. In other words, its public perception, and not
much more.
I wonder if we can establish a trend line with this data?
I confess I have never looked at Facebook and I have no idea how it
works or what is in it. I gather it is all the rage.
I've no idea either, I don't use it actively. I can say however that if
the Rossi third-party story is getting popular there, then it will
likely become soon popular in the mainstream news media too. I think
that Microsoft's Xbox One annoncement/presentation is getting all the
attention at the moment, tough.
Cheers,
S.A.
