Tearfree was WRONG!

Tearfree’s mean vs. nice American Idol experiment did not provide the data she hoped it would. What's more, Tearfree's prediction that Katharine would lose was way off the mark. How did it happen, you ask.

On Tuesday, Tearfree and a panel watched the show and gave Simon’s comments a meanness rating from 1 to 10, with 10 being as mean as Tearfree. Paula’s comments were given a niceness rating from 1 to 10, with 10 being as nice as a Koolaid Mummy.

Taylor

Simon meanness rating 3
Paula niceness rating 10

Chris

Simon meanness rating 4
Paula niceness rating 10

Elliott

Simon meanness rating 1
Paula niceness rating 10

Katharine

Simon meanness rating 9
Paula niceness rating 5


Attentive viewers will have noticed that Paula kind of damned Katharine with faint praise. She told her she had a “lovely voice, “ but didn’t say anything great about her singing that night. Basically, Simon and Paula agreed, making it hard to come to any definitive conclusion about the influence of mean vs. nice

And then America voted – and went and sent Katharine home. You could see the shock on Katharine’s and Chris’ faces not to mention Tearfree’s and her panel’s. America had rejected the opinions of the meanest and nicest judges and decided for itself. Whaaat?

“Well,” said one of Tearfree’s panelists, “you can still claim a victory for the influence of mean because if mean Simon Cowell hadn’t thrown his credibility behind Elliott, it would have been him that would have been gone.”

Hmm, Tearfree doesn’t want to manipulate the data. It seems that we started too late in the season to have a statistically valid sampling.

Tearfree has decided to attribute Chris’ loss to discrimination against bald men.