Spinning the rhetoric

An article in New Scientist seems to provide scientific reinforcement to the common perception that Paul Martin "spins" his words more than Stephen Harper or even Jack Layton:

With the most fiercely fought Canadian election in more than a decade taking place on Monday, the crossfire of political rhetoric between the incumbent prime minister and his Conservative Party challenger is becoming heated — but which one is more trustworthy?

According to a new computer algorithm, Prime Minister Paul Martin, of the Liberal Party, spins the subject matter of his speeches dramatically more than Conservative Party leader, Stephen Harper, and the New Democratic Party leader, Jack Layton.

Spin, in this case, is defined as "text or speech where the apparent meaning is not the true belief of the person saying or writing it", says the algorithm's developer, David Skillicorn at Queen's University in Ontario, Canada.

He and his team analysed the usage patterns of 88 deception-linked words within the text of recent campaign speeches from the political leaders. They then determined the frequency of these patterns in each speech, and averaged that number over all of that candidate's speeches. Martin received a ranking of 124, while Harper and Layton scored 73 and 88, respectively.

"I think it's expected that any party in power is going to use spin more than the challenging party," Skillicorn says. "They have a track record to defend."

"They have a track record to defend." Or, in this case, obscure.

Hat tip to Paul Wells.