Al's Morning Meeting

RELATED

Like Al's ideas? Hear more in our broadcast and online seminars. Get Al's Morning Meeting updates as an RSS feed: Copy this link and add it to your feed reader. Sign up to receive Al's Morning Meeting by e-mail,  sent Monday-Friday at 7 a.m. Buy Al's book, "Aim for the Heart," here, and Poynter receives a small cut as an Amazon affiliate.

I don't know if this has happened to you, but once in a while I leave my cellphone keypad unlocked. Somehow I will dial a number while the phone is in my pocket. It is an annoyance when I call a friend or co-workers.

It is a safety problem when millions of people mistakenly call 911, which is happening a lot, according to the Center for Problem-Oriented Policing:

The National Emergency Number Association reports that phantom wireless calls account for between 25 and 70 percent of all 911 calls in some U.S. communities. The California Highway Patrol (currently the handler of nearly all California wireless 911 calls) estimates that between 1.8 million and 3.6 million of the 6 million wireless 911 calls it receives annually are phantom. U.K. police estimate they receive 11,000 phantom wireless calls per day to their 999 emergency number. The wide data variations highlight the need for further research to pinpoint the scale of the problem.

However, the problem is already serious enough to suggest that ignoring it could have severe ramifications for police and legitimate 911 callers.

Of all the 911 misuse and abuse problems this guide addresses, phantom wireless calls will show the quickest increase, unless addressed. The U.S. 911 system handles 500,000 calls daily, or about 183 million annually. One in four calls are from wireless phones, a tenfold increase since 1991. In the next five years, the number of wireless 911 calls is expected to double from the current 46 million per year to 92 million annually, potentially exacerbating an already significant phantom call problem.

---

'Misdials' Add to the Problem

Add to the phantom calls the problem of "misdialing." The Center for Problem-Oriented Policing reports:

Misdials and hang-up calls are another 911 problem. Police suspect that many of these calls occur when callers misdial area codes similar to 911. Others result from misdialing of the international access number: 011. In addition, business Centrex and fax users sometimes dial 9 to get an outside line, when their phone systems do not require doing so, if the caller then dials a number starting with 1 and depresses 1 again by accident, the system dials 911 (thus 911 operators sometimes hear fax static on the line).  In 2000, the Pinellas County, Florida, Emergency Communications Center received 20,646 misdials, accounting for 4 percent of all its 911 calls. In Loves Park, Illinois, 3 percent of the 911 calls received in 2000 resulted from area code, international access number and Centrex misdials.

Such area codes include those for Wilmington, N.C. (910); Savannah, Ga. (912); Kansas City, Kan. (913); Westchester County, N.Y. (914); El Paso, Texas (915); Sacramento, Calif. (916); some parts of New York City (917); Tulsa, Okla. (918); and Raleigh, N.C. (919).

It is suspected that many misdials end up as hang-up calls, once the callers realize their mistake. Agencies that have examined hang-up calls report that a majority are due to caller misdialing (rather than prank calls or hang-ups for other reasons). Many agencies instruct citizens not to hang up if they misdial 911. If a caller hangs up, many agencies conduct callbacks or dispatch officers to determine if a police or medical emergency exists.

---

Why Don't We Have an AIDS Vaccine?

In April 1984, a Department of Health and Human Services senior official said at a press conference that there would be a marketable vaccine within "a minimum of two years, probably more like three years." In 2008, there is still no such vaccine. See why one researcher believes it will be at least a decade before a licensed AIDS vaccine is available.

---

Defibrillators Save Lives if Used Fast Enough

A new study in the New England Journal of Medicine says hospitalized patients who suffer from cardiac arrest are more likely to survive if their hearts are shocked back into rhythm within two minutes. Thirty percent of such patients, however, aren't getting help fast enough.

---

Exam Cheating

The Boston Globe finds that exam cheating is getting easier and easier:

As many industries move to require certification by examination, the trade in crib sheets has emerged as a lucrative and well-organized global black market. One operator in Oregon made $700,000 in about nine months before his arrest; the owner of the Ohio website pocketed more than $300,000. A Pakistani who sells stolen answers for computer technician exams proudly displays photos of a stable of luxury cars on his website.

Recently, the dangers of Internet-based cheating have become more apparent. The Globe reported earlier this month that tens of thousands of soldiers obtained answers to tests in a range of military skills from websites. The Army case was especially egregious, testing specialists said, because even modest measures that are widely used to prevent cheating weren't in place. The sheer number of Army cheaters also surprised some testing specialists.

But private-sector certification groups say they, too, are increasingly finding the answers to their exams available on the Internet.

[...] Some of the biggest players in the trade are overseas websites like TestKing.com, the site owned by the car enthusiast in Faisalabad, Pakistan, that specializes in answers to technology tests. Officials at test-security firms estimate that the site sells about 146,000 sets of answers and takes in about $10 million per year.

The Globe provides some examples of cheating.

---

Understanding Polls

Let's start the new year with a new understanding of one of the most important stories you will cover in 2008. 

During election years, journalists are bombarded with data from polls. Are you confident you can tell the legitimate numbers from the sloppy surveys? How effectively can you evaluate the polling methods? Do you know when nine out of 10 really isn't nine out of 10?

Poynter's News University course, Understanding and Interpreting Polls, will give you the tools to go beyond conventional "horserace" election poll reporting. News University partnered with the American Association for Public Opinion Research for this free e-learning course, which features a special section to help you identify trends in voter preference and explore ways of using polling data throughout the election cycle.

The course will help you gain a better understanding of how polls are conducted, what to look for in the methodology and how to determine the legitimacy of a poll. When you are finished, you should know what questions to ask about polls, where to look for answers and why it matters.

This online course takes one to two hours to complete and can be accessed at any time. Learn more and sign up now.

---

Editor's Note: Al's Morning Meeting is a compendium of ideas, edited story excerpts and other materials from a variety of Web sites, as well as original concepts and analysis. When the information comes directly from another source, it will be attributed and a link will be provided whenever possible. The column is fact-checked, but depends on the accuracy and integrity of the original sources cited. Errors and inaccuracies found will be corrected.