From our Grain of Salt Dept.: You can't always believe what you read

Attention pollsters: in the future when compiling survey statistics, it probably is advisable to throw out any feline or canine responses. Tracy Costin found that out the hard way last week.

The owner of DataUSA Inc., a company that conducted political polls for the campaigns of President George Bush, Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman and other candidates, faces up to five years in prison after pleading guilty to fraud charges.

It seems that when preparing polls for clients, Costin didn't consider it particularly important to actually find people to respond to survey questions.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Edward Chang said that on several occasions when the company was facing a deadline to meet a job, results were falsified. Sometimes the respondent's gender or political affiliation were altered to meet a quota, other times all survey answers were fabricated.

According to the federal indictment, company managers went so far as to instruct employees to "talk to cats and dogs" when instructing them to falsify data.

In addition to a jail term, Costin also faces fines of up to $250,000 and must repay more than $80,000 to 11 unidentified clients. What a ruff way for her career as a pollster to end.

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