News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:New UK Law Mandates Organ Donation by Default Unless Expl... by forgingahead on Saturday April 24, 2021 @01:45AM (#26922556)
80% of people in England support organ donation

This is nonsense, because this is the standard fallacy of any survey. You take a sample and extrapolate out to the general population. If your sample is not representative, then the statement is false.

In fact, I would go so far as to say that we should mandate a law whereby nobody can claim "% of X agree to Y" unless it is specifically stated "% of X surveyed out of a sample size of N agree to Y. Here's a link to the methodology and questions."

Organ donation is good and important, but default opt-in is a bad decision, and the reasoning listed for it is worse.

Re:New UK Law Mandates Organ Donation by Default Unless Expl... by zimpenfish on Saturday April 24, 2021 @02:49AM (#26922801)
"NHSBT carries out biannual attitudinal surveys. The fourth wave in 2017, involved 1499 interviews carried out via online self-completion between the 10th and 21st of April 2017. In this wave, 81% of people supported organ donation in principle."

https://www.organdonation.nhs.uk/get-involved/news/hundreds-...

But alas, no methodology and questions on that page.

Re:New UK Law Mandates Organ Donation by Default Unless Expl... by forgingahead on Saturday April 24, 2021 @10:36AM (#26925126)
Precisely, this is a bullshit survey with dodgy results. Online self-completion? 1499 participants? If this survey was the basis of this change in law, to be default opt-in, then something very terrible has happened.
Re:New UK Law Mandates Organ Donation by Default Unless Expl... by bserge on Saturday April 24, 2021 @02:56AM (#26922836)
Seems rather accurate. Most people will assume "organ donor if you're 100% impossible to revive", if that is the case, might as well help someone else.