I suggest that we take an unscientific vote on this matter, then table the topic until there is some more definitive news, which may never come, but then again might.
The wisdom of crowds suggests that our completely biased and boneheaded attitudes and beliefs--contradictory as the stew of opinions here is--might well cancel each other out in such a way as to provide a valid collective answer.
Then we can come back in a year, decade, or whenever, and some can yell, "I told you so!" from their respective berths in the nursing home, before, that is, speedily reattaching the oxygen mask and HGH drip.
I think everyone would like to believe she's clean. I just want to see what people actually think--convinced one way or the other (standard for criminal trial), skeptical but leaning in one direction or the other (standard for civil trial), or truly unable to decide (not sure what this is a standard for, other than maybe a hung jury).
As far as the uselessness of such polls go, you're almost certainly correct. However, I heard once in a description of "the wisdom of crowds" that somebody asked a throng to estimate the weight of a bull. Guesses varied all over the map, from 200 lb. to 12,000. But when you totalled up all the guesses and averaged them, the "wise crowd" had collectively pegged the bull's weight within an ounce or two of its real weight.
Of course, you need a pretty big crowd to get such results, and I don't think it works for everything. For instance, we had a fairly big crowd voting in the past two presidential elections...but the cleanliness or dirtiness involved in this is another topic altogether.
I think everyone would like to believe she's clean. I just want to see what people actually think--convinced one way or the other (standard for criminal trial), skeptical but leaning in one direction or the other (standard for civil trial), or truly unable to decide (not sure what this is a standard for, other than maybe a hung jury).
As far as the uselessness of such polls go, you're almost certainly correct. However, I heard once in a description of "the wisdom of crowds" that somebody asked a throng to estimate the weight of a bull. Guesses varied all over the map, from 200 lb. to 12,000. But when you totalled up all the guesses and averaged them, the "wise crowd" had collectively pegged the bull's weight within an ounce or two of its real weight.
Of course, you need a pretty big crowd to get such results, and I don't think it works for everything. For instance, we had a fairly big crowd voting in the past two presidential elections...but the cleanliness or dirtiness involved in this is another topic altogether.
