Beware of being misled on Hilton Head ‘vision’
In Savannah recently 75 percent of survey respondents wanted to keep a Confederate memorial. Was that survey valid? Who knows? There were no scientific controls.
The Town of Hilton Head Island’s vision study has the same flaw. There are no scientific controls to assure statistical validity.
As a result, it is quite possible that certain groups could gain unfair representation in the results. Furthermore, our choices seemed to be pre-chewed before we even saw them.
Do you think gaming of a survey for our vision process couldn’t happen here? Two recent glowing letters to the editor about our vision process came from people who appear to work for a firm that does business with the town and could benefit from town connections.
One of those is on the town’s vision task force. They should have disclosed that they were not random citizens, but did not.
A recent editorial in a local magazine pushed the need for a strong mayor form of government. There were no real facts to back that up. To me, a dictatorial mayor and friends pushing data-less visions is the last thing we need.
It seems to me that we are entering a dark age where a handful of well-connected people are telling us what to do without data, scientific methods, benefit-cost analyses or peer review. I have seen some of the town’s advisers do this in the past to finance their pet projects.
Beware!
Steven M. Baer
Hilton Head Island
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This story was originally published January 19, 2018 at 6:00 AM with the headline "Beware of being misled on Hilton Head ‘vision’."