What is an opinion and is it worth surveying all of them? | OPINION

I sometimes ask myself this question - after all, this is an "opinion column".

I spent years doing research and writing up the results in a way which was acceptable to the academic journals for publishing.

This was very accurate, but also very restrictive if you wanted to express an opinion (there, I've said it).

I decided to get out of academia and become more independent - this meant my salary had disappeared but I slept better and, when I woke up, I felt free to "express an opinion".

You should know me by now - off to the Macquarie Essential Dictionary: "Opinion - 1: A judgement or belief not held firmly enough to produce certainty. 2: A personal view. 3: Formal non-binding advice on the legal position of some matter, as given by counsel or by a court."

Easing myself out of academia, my first foray into the real world was best described as Opinion 1.

I was still weaning myself off the strict standards you had to meet in academic discourse, and that took a few years before I transitioned to Opinion 2.

The Collins Concise English Dictionary is slightly different: "Opinion - 1: A belief not based on certainty or knowledge but on what seems true, valid, or probable. 2: An evaluation, estimation, etc. 3: An expert's formal judgement. 4: The formal statement by a judge, court referee etc of the law bearing on a case."

But you get the drift.

Regular readers will know that I flit between 1 and 2, which gives me a fair amount of leeway.

The editor has quite literally given me a free rein on what topics to give an opinion on over the years, so for the record, "thank you, Ashley."

I've given my opinion on a wide range of topics over the years, and I won't bore you by commenting on each one.

This year's can wait till the Review of the Year in December.

Everyone has an opinion on something. If they didn't, those companies running opinion polls would be out of a job.

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The value of the poll rests entirely on who comprises the "everyone" in the sample of the population asked to voice an opinion.

It's a very pleasant quiet Sunday afternoon as I write, which is the ideal time for me to ponder on this.

I decided to look for any reports on polls in the local Sunday newspaper.

I struck it lucky: "Statistics on medical cannabis use are collated in a number of ways. More than 85 per cent of GPs have patients asking about the drug, but only 52pc felt comfortable discussing it with patients and nearly 70pc felt they had inadequate knowledge, a survey published in the journal BioMed Central Primary Care, in December found."

There was no mention of how the GPs were chosen and how many were in the sample.

How the GPs were chosen is the fundamental question - by selective choice of those in a sample, you can get any result you want.

The same applies to any opinion poll aimed at those in agriculture and horticulture

I rest my case.

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