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A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam
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From Neil Sheehan
This report was last updated 6/2/2018.
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Report Info:
Last Updated: Jun 2, 2018
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Note: We only analyze "reviews" and ignore one-tap "ratings".
Report Card
Fail Overall Grade
FAIL
Reviewer Ease
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WARN
Suspicious Reviewers
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WARN
Phrase Repetition
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WARN
Reviewer Participation
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PASS
Rating Trend
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PASS
Unverified Purchases
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PASS
Word Count Comparison
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PASS
Overlapping Review History
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PASS
Brand Repeats
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PASS
Incentivized Reviews
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PASS
Deleted Reviews
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Most Trusted Reviews
My husband, a Vietnam veteran, read this book and recommended ... [Go to full review]
Aug 5, 2001
100%
TRUST
TRUST
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Unverified Purchaser
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Take-Back Reviewer (3 deleted Reviews; avg. rating: 4.3)
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Brand Repeater (3 of 117 reviews for this brand; avg rating: 5.0)
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Critical Reviewer (avg. rating: 4.1)
Least Trusted Reviews
A really good book because it gets to the heart ... [Go to full review]
Jan 23, 2014
15%
TRUST
TRUST
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Verified Purchaser
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Contains repetitive phrases (
show)
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Take-Back Reviewer (3 deleted Reviews; avg. rating: 4.3)
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Easy Grader (avg. rating: 4.5)
Analysis Details
Fail
Reviewer Ease
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The ease score is the average rating for all reviews that a given reviewer submits. The average ease score for reviewers of this product is 4.4, while the average ease score for reviewers in this category is 4.3. Based on our statistical modeling, the discrepancy in average rating between these two groups is significant enough to believe that the difference is not due to random chance, and may indicate that there are unnatural reviews.
4.4 Product's Average Ease Score
4.3 Category's Average Ease Score
Read more about our Reviewer Ease test.
Warn
Suspicious Reviewers
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Take-Back Reviewers
22 of the 275 reviewers have had at least one of their past reviews for another product deleted. While this is more Take-Back Reviewers than we'd expect to see, it does not appear to have a significant impact on the overall rating.
Warn
Phrase Repetition
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Reviews that contain one of these phrases are NOT necessarily devalued; read more about how this test works here.
Common Phrases in Reviews:
Show MoreShow Less
27 reviews
12 reviews
28 reviews
12 reviews
16 reviews
10 reviews
112 of the 275 total reviews for this product use substantial repetitive phrases between them. This is an excessively large percentage which may indicate unnatural reviews.
Warn
Reviewer Participation
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- 57%
- From reviewers with an overrepresented participation
We see the following 2 participation groups with a statistically significant greater concentration than what we'd expect to see:In total, we found that 158 reviewers (or 59%) are within an overrepresented participation group. This is an excessively high number of reviewers in overrepresented participation groups.
Pass
Rating Trend
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- 0%
- Created on high-volume days
We counted 275 reviews for this product over the span of 7,876 days, an average of 0.0 reviews per day. If these reviews were created randomly, there would be a 99.9% chance that we would see 2 or fewer reviews on any given day. We didn't find any days exceeding this threshold.
Read more about our Rating Trend test.
Read more about our Rating Trend test.
Pass
Unverified Purchases
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106 of the 275 total reviews for this product are unverified purchases. This is within an acceptable range and it does not appear to be significantly affecting the overall rating for this product.
Unverified purchases may be the result of Kindle Unlimited readers, buyers who didn't pay full price, or reviewers who did not purchase the product at Amazon. Read more about our Unverified Purchases test.
Pass
Word Count Comparison
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- 0%
- Have an overrepresented word count
We didn't find any review word count groups that had a statistically significant greater concentration than what we'd expect to see in this category.
Read more about our Word Count Comparison test.
Read more about our Word Count Comparison test.
Pass
Overlapping Review History
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Reviewers of this product have ALSO reviewed the following products:
6% also reviewed:
The Best and the Brightest by David Halberstam
5% also reviewed:
Their Finest Hour (The Second World War) by Churchill, Winston, Sir
5% also reviewed:
Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare
4% also reviewed:
A Christmas Carol (DK Classics) by Charles Dickens
4% also reviewed:
The Things They Carried (Contemporary American... by Tim O'Brien
4% also reviewed:
Dispatches by Michael Herr
4% also reviewed:
The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War by David Halberstam
Does not include products
from the same brand
from the same brand
53 of the 275 reviewers have substantial overlapping product review history. This is within an acceptable range and it does not appear to be significantly affecting the overall rating for this product.
Pass
Brand Repeats
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Brand Repeaters
7 of the 275 reviewers have reviewed other products for this brand. This is within an acceptable range and it does not appear to be significantly affecting the overall rating for this product.
Pass
Incentivized Reviews
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On Oct 3, 2016, Amazon prohibited incentivized reviews, however we still test for them since there are still millions in our dataset.
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- 0%
- Admitted to receiving an incentive
We didn't detect any reviews that used language indicating they were incentivized.
Read more about our Incentivized Reviews test. Check out our study showing that Incentivized Reviewers are much more likely to leave a positive review.
Read more about our Incentivized Reviews test. Check out our study showing that Incentivized Reviewers are much more likely to leave a positive review.
Pass
Deleted Reviews
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- 0
- Reviews have been deleted
We have not discovered any deleted reviews for this product.
There are a few limitations to keep in mind regarding the Deleted Reviews test:
There are a few limitations to keep in mind regarding the Deleted Reviews test:
- We don't have a magic ability to collect every single deleted review; we can only identify reviews as deleted if we collect them on one date and then notice they are no longer visible on a subsequent date.
- We have no information on reviews that were never published in the first place.
- We also don't know why these reviews were removed. It could be action from the platform, personal decision by the review author, part of an entire account closure, even some data error on our part, etc.