Curia Market Research Found In Breach Of Professional Standards
Written By:
- Date published:
1:43 pm, August 16th, 2024 - 43 comments
Categories: David Farrar, taxpayers union -
Tags: Atlas Network, Curia Market Research, Free Speech Union, taxpayers union
This is an excerpt from Mountain Tui’s Substack.
David Farrar, a co-founder of Taxpayers Union, who he remains in lock-step with, has “resigned” his research firm, Curia, from The Research Association of New Zealand (RANZ).
For those of you who don’t know, RANZ is NZ’s only professional standards and industry group “dedicated to professional providers and users of research, data and insights. The Research Association New Zealand (RANZ) brand is a trust-mark .. and indicates that the bearer is a member of an expert community, which upholds the highest professional and ethical standards.”
Its code of conduct says, among other requirements:
Members must never undertake any activities, under the guise of research, that aim to manipulate, mislead or coerce individuals. This applies throughout the research process including proposal, recruitment, data collection, analysis and reporting.
It looks like the Professional Standards Group (PSG) of RANZ upheld complaints against Curia for bias, and were potentially on their way to suspending/expelling Curia Research – so Farrar resigned.
One of a series of complaints included Curia helping Jordan William’s other outfit, Free Speech Union, with compiling survey results. Curia omitted critical data points.
About the breach of professional standards, a few days ago, Farrar wrote:
“Yesterday I saw an e-mail from RANZ that, not only had the PSG upheld the latest complaint against me, but that it was considering a recommendation that could involve suspension to expulsion. I was absolutely stunned…with the deepest regret I resigned from RANZ.”
It will be interesting to see whether political parties and media still quote Curia, given the breach of professional standards. Perhaps Taxpayers Union will play a polling firm role, or maybe Williams and Farrar will just spin up a new name and organisation to stand behind.
Addendum: Here is an RNZ article from May 2024 regarding Curia’s poor standards
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David Farrah's post does raise questions about polling by a range of companies. What counts as a leading question? How good is a lot of polling currently done in NZ? particularly ones on political issues.
There’s no need to divert attention here. Curia Research breached the standards and there’s been extensive discussion on the how/why:
https://www.reddit.com/r/nzpolitics/comments/1escg1f/curia_found_in_breach_of_industry_standards/
&
https://www.reddit.com/r/newzealand/comments/1esghxy/curia_has_resigned_from_the_research_association/
One of the comments there includes:
“As someone who has experience with RANZ previously, there are standards that you have to adhere to.
However these are not onerous, and indeed they are a normal expectation of an impartial research process.
A breach of these standards does not usually mean being expelled. There are remedial assurances that you can give, and meeting these doesn’t have to be obviously played out in the public eye.
To consider expulsion, this suggests that the breach was deliberately mendacious, sustained – or comes on the back of a pattern of previous behaviour. It suggests there is more to this than the stated issue”
OK. Point taken.
If you support any left party there is no good outcome from giving Curia any information. It's better not to participate.
The last two times Curia rang me I abused them for their frauduleet polls , told the caller he/she should be ashamed of working for Farrar and politely told them to FO. I think they may have recorded me as 'undecided.' ..What do I think now?.pass me some more shadenfreude sandwiches.
Just watch Yes Prime Minister on national conscription and the questions Sir Humphrey devises for Bernard to get the opposite results each time.
Mary Stuart -Absolutely yes.
Let us be clear The RANZ Standards found Curia Polls did not meet the standards required. That comment of yours smacks of "whataboutism " Karolyn_IS.
Other Polls may have passed muster, so where is your proof to back that smear that all Political Polls are rigged.
Tui is biased af against David. He's banned many people on Reddit who dare link his posts.
[lprent: I see that you’re up to your old troll tricks again. Make two completely separate and quite unrelated statements and let the readers fill in the blanks.
The first part can be viewed as opinion on the post although you have asserted it as fact. Hell I am ‘biased’ against Farrar because I view him as a unscrupulous arsehole on blogs with his frequent unsubstantiated insinuations that mix fact and speculation. But also because Curia has been notable for the use of slanted questions when I’ve rung by them in the past – ie the subject of this post.
However you’ve made a direct assertion of fact in the second part which is an claim against an author. And the policy is pretty damn clear about the sites view on that.
I am banning you until you provide some credible proof of that assertion of fact in the next couple of days. I don’t believe that it is true – mostly because I don’t think that tui has been a moderator at reddit. A link or screenshot to a actual ban should suffice for you to prove your assertion.
Or an comment apology to tui would be seen in the mod queue and may cause me to change your ban duration.
Otherwise you get a 4 week ban because you should know better – you have been commenting here since 2008 ummm (6006 comments). You should definitely know better. Slow learner. ]
Well it's easy to bias against a guy who, well, has be associated with some strange parties.
see mod note.
I do know David Farrar's blogs are specifically banned on certain subreddits for being misinformation – but ironically, me and the mods on nzpolitics did allow links from Farrar at times – for example this one where Farrar comes out to try to smear David Seymour's links to Atlas Network as a "conspiracy" – echoing Chris Bishop that day.
(I think this was the day after, or very soon after, David Seymour lied about his connections to Atlas)
Of course, no-one else says Atlas Network is a conspiracy – including Taxpayers Union and NZ Initiative which openly admit they are partners.
The only caveat I would add is nzpolitics didn't allow intentional, outright misinformation or disinformation and that's a fact. So there might have been some overlap in that regard, for certain.
Mountain Tui, I'm not sure if it was you or on one of of your Posts..but I thankyou for the Chiding in plain sight link. Which I bookmarked. There is a part 2 as well.
Very revealing on the machinations of Jordan Atlas Williams and David Farrar !
Yes I might have linked it – it's an excellent resource. Thanks for sharing Part II PsyclingLeft.Always !
Forgot to add – not one person has ever been banned for posting David Farrar so not sure why you want to lie about it.
Farrar's excuses are the finest hogwash. This guy was a significant part of Dirty Politics and is by no means neutral.
He claims this is a political smear campaign. And he's saying how hurt and stressed he is.
Diddums
You'll note that the post wasn't about 'gender-critical' issues. In fact it didn't mention it.
That just happened to be the question that Farrar chose to highlight amongst the ones he got pinged on. Presumably because of his general mischief meme, and the fools who fall into it.
If you want to raise 'gender-critical' questions related to thise then try OpenMike, which is where I dumped all of the ones from here that referred to it here. I will also spend time being nasty in comments ab out the quality of the 'gender-critical' comments, because I feel that it is a worthwhile use of my time.
Any further off-topic comments are likely to get a very abrupt response from me as a moderator.
I was a tad suspicious about a recent (the latest?) Curia poll which asked questions about the Tana saga.
Best I could find was that it was released exclusively to RNZ.
A Curia 2.0 is likely to turn up again in a different guise. Their purpose, in my view, is to influence public opinion, not merely to record it.
Interesting comment made by DPF in that archived link:
I thought he just worked for National and corporates.
Three possibilities there,
1 – Farrar did work for "opposition" entities to construct a veneer of impartiality
2 – The "opposition" entities actively engaged Curia to check that his work was impartial by comparing it with the same work done by other agencies.
3- Curia is actually as impartial as any of the other polling agencies, the entities that commission them, and the media that report them.
I'm inclined to think all three are in play to varying degrees. Samuel Clements' maxim of journalism comes into play here, &ldquo;<strong>get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please</strong>.&rdquo;
It's quite possible for both these things to be true at the same time:
1. David Farrar is a right-wing political activist.
2. Left-wing political activists weaponise the RANZ complaints process against his company.
Item 1 is definitely true. Item 2 not definite but highly likely to be true. The question of whether you believe his company biases its polls or not is likely to be a matter of how partisan you are for right or left.
As discussed here: https://www.reddit.com/r/nzpolitics/comments/1escg1f/curia_found_in_breach_of_industry_standards/
It's very hard to get expelled from RANZ, and the proof is in his own statements. e.g. omitting critical data points about the FSU academia survey, asking leading questuons and also passing misinformation about gender topics etc.
And as for the partisan point, a breach of RANZ industry standards – for an organisation that has major polling organisations and is friendly with Farrar (per his own words) is testament that this has never to do with partisanship – although some might want to paint it that way to protect Farrar and divert from what happened here.
Which is pretty simple.
It's discussed there by partisans for the left, so of course the people discussing it believe Curia biases its polls.
When I was young and naive, I used to believe respected professional organisations must inevitably be trustworthy in their ethical standards and decision-making, these days I know better. If RANZ genuinely was planning to expel Curia, it may be because Curia breached ethical standards, it may be because some individual has some personal axe to grind with Farrar and persuaded others, or it may be that some of its leaders are leftists. I wouldn’t put money on any particular one of the three.
EDIT: On reflection, there’s a fourth possibility: people running RANZ are sick of having to deal with the constant complaints about Curia so find some reasons to justify expelling it.
It's very on brand for the ACT adjacent RW to attack regulatory and advocacy institutions and organisations.
They attack the regulations and oversight put in place to guard against a concentration of power by fewer and fewer wealthy individuals, and put in place to protect and support the disenfranchised.
Regulatory and advocacy institutions doing their job in such a way is red meat to Farrar and Seymour. Although they pretend to worship rules based order, do they really? Seems not, when it suits them not to.
I expected Farrar in the coming weeks to begin attacking RANZ for its effrontery, I didn't realise his proxies would start straight away.
Taxpayers Union and their affiliate groups/individuals are renowned for their astrosurfing and dirty tactics.
Just some examples –
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/439960/ex-act-staffer-grant-mclachlan-says-party-created-fake-grassroots-groups
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/in-depth/496933/astroturf-accusations-over-we-belong-website-run-by-anti-co-governance-group
Yes, the tactics employed are standard, and as you suggest, it's not necessarily that they always attack regulatory or advocacy groups – it's just the ones that don't agree with them.
Then all sorts of convoluted logic is employed to discredit and paint them as negative/compromised – when the truth is the only compromised ones are those doing that dirty work.
In other words, you try to defend Farrar and Curia by claiming anyone's analysis that doesn't fit in with yours is "left wing" despite the rational and experienced analysis.
And you now go further to try to paint professional lauded industry groups as tainted because your precious Taxpayers Union founder David Farrar, and Curia Research, was – after numerous infringements that are documented and clear breaches – in violation of professional standards.
Yet Farrar himself speaks well of RANZ.
But your take is is a standard tactic i.e. try discredit the organisation and motives to protect your people.
Sigh. I have a long history of opposing Farrar via comments on his blog dating back to 2005 and have (accurately) described the Taxpayers' Union as a right-wing astroturfing operation, so I'll just skip over the blather about my supposed enthusiasm for them.
My point essentially is that argument from authority is a logical fallacy. RANZ's board may consist of people of the highest ethical standards, or it may not. I don't know one way or the other and I doubt that you do either. If they genuinely were going to expel Curia, it may mean Curia's acted unethically or it may not. What actually matters is what evidence exists. So far, what I've seen is decidedly underwhelming.
"If they genuinely were going to expel Curia, it may mean Curia's acted unethically or it may not. "
And if a person were to be arrested, but skipped the country before doing so, it may mean they acted criminally or not – if that were Farrar or Williams for you I presume.
Please keep your attempts off this thread and bring them to Open Mike if you want to litigate for their cause.
Well, yes. If an alleged offender hasn't been tried, we don't know whether they're guilty of the offence or not. And in some cases, we can't even be confident they're guilty even if they have been tried, eg the Lucy Letby case in the UK is a recent example. A recognition that it's possible to be wrong about something isn't advocacy for any particular cause.
So a person who skips the country because they were about to be arrested is quite possibly innocent according to you.
And you then lean on far reaching overseas cases as evidence of this and so, per your logic, anything is actually possible because that criminal is probably just an innocent boy escaping the jaws of the law, rather than being willing to face the evidence and a fair trial here in NZ.
For example, according to you then, should Philip Polkinghorne run away now to Colombia to prove his innocence?
Because in your defence of Farrar, these are the things you suggest are viable.
The wrinkle in all this of course would be Farrar's own post that reveals a lack of due diligence and professional standards such that the professional standards group that he is very friendly with (according to himself) found him guilty.
https://www.reddit.com/r/nzpolitics/comments/1escg1f/curia_found_in_breach_of_industry_standards/
OK, well excuse me for suggesting it's possible for humans to be wrong about something. I'll leave you to it.
Is it possible you are wrong about this?
Humans can always be wrong, it's the running inteference that strikes my attention – especially for the obvious.
Here's an interesting article:
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/516461/changes-made-after-criticism-of-free-speech-union-report
A part of the article:
In small print in the "Academic Freedom" survey invitation that Curia emailed around to academics was this – "Please do not forward this email as its survey link is unique to you. "
This is totally unnecessary if the point is to gauge people's opinions. However, if the point is to collect contact details of like-minded indivduals for later targeting then this met the bill.
Not a good look.
Apparently they also hardly got any responses from acadamics so Farrar left out the response rate.
Curia cherry pickin'. Its what they do….
Here's one of the problematic Curia Research reports:
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/516461/changes-made-after-criticism-of-free-speech-union-report
A part of the article:
[lprent: removed bold and fixed the blockquote. ]
Interesting.
Broadly, TPU/Curia/Farrar/ACT as a rule are at odds with academia and the described but mythical managerial class, and this is just one of many attempts to defund tertiary institutions which they and their backers do not like.
There's a worrying similarity between them and the dissociative old/red left which also complain hard about contemporary progressive politics.
I followed this at the time. And I believe I wrote a post about it somewhere.
Essentially Free Speech Union (FSU) was running a campaign claiming they were standing up for academia and called on academics to join their fight for free speech.
At the EXACT SAME TIME Taxpayers Union (TPU) – Jordan William's other outfit – was running a campaign attacking academics as 'elites'.
The only question is how many people remain ignorant of their games and dirty tactics.
Hi Mountain Tui. Just wondering, amongst all the David Curia Farrar and also Jordan Atlas/TPU Williams reveal, have you seen any connectivity with Simon throat cutter Lusk? Thanks as always for your Input on The Standard
)
Good evening PsyclingLeft.Always,
I have not, but will look into it. Thanks and cheers!