What is it with anti-fluoridationists abusing online polls? Over the years I’ve seen many Facebook pages and groups abusing website polls, just to make it seem like more people are against fluoridation than there actually are. It doesn’t matter how small the website is, which country the poll is from, or how insignificant polling is.

With a new study from Canada showing that when water fluoridation stops there is an increase of cavities, a few polls have recently popped up on news sites around this topic. It appears that this study has annoyed a lot of the anti-fluoride groups around the world, and they are making sure people vote.

There are three main polls going around currently, in four articles:

Here are screenshots from a small sample of anti-fluoride Facebook pages from the 18th, 19th and 20th of February, all asking people to vote in these polls. Note that a good proportion of these groups are not based in Canada:

 

poll-abuse-18,19,20-Feb

 

Some pages just can’t get enough of these polls. Within 48 hours, Fluoride Free Lethbridge had posted four times to get people to vote:

 

FFL loves polls

 

Has their mad frenzy of voting been worth it?

  • The poll from CBC “Is it safe to add fluoride to the drinking water supply?”, shows “No” at 55%.
  • The poll from CTV News “Should city council reintroduce fluoride to Calgary’s drinking water?”, shows “No” at 39%.
  • The poll from Calgary Sun “Did city council make the right move when they ceased water fluoridation?”, shows “Yes” at 59%.

They are barely ahead on two out of three of these polls, and behind on the third (two polls are still open at the time of writing). Will people (other than anti-fluoridationists) take these polls seriously? I doubt it.