Identify the flaw in the argument: “An internet streaming company recently asked its subscribers if they were happy with their streaming services. If respondents answered yes, they were given $100 cash. If respondents answered no, all they received was an aggressive email from a customer service representative. 95% of respondents said they were happy with the services. Therefore, the company’s streaming services are satisfying to almost all of their customers.”
This is a sampling flaw. It’s totally fine to use polls to support conclusions, but in order to do so, it’s important to make sure there’s nothing shady with the polls. Here, offering a cash prize for certain answers and not for other answers clearly incentivizes people to respond to the survey in a certain way. Thus, the results are not reliable.