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Witch Hunt: The Story of the Greatest Mass Delusion in American Political History
More product info From Jarrett, Gregg

Brigade Warning!:
Our algorithm has detected a large amount of suspicious negative reviews. Learn more about Review Brigades.
Amazon Reviews for  Witch Hunt: The Story of the Greatest Mass Delusion in American Political History
Rating:
283 Ratings
286 Reviews
("Ratings" vs. "Reviews")
48% of potentially unnatural reviews removed (why?)
Adjusted:
View/Edit Adjustment
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Report Info:
Last Updated: Jun 18, 2020
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Note: While Amazon.com claims 283 Ratings, we counted 286 Reviews available on their site.
Note: We only analyze "reviews" and ignore one-tap "ratings".

Report Card

Warn Overall Grade
FAIL Unverified Purchases
FAIL Suspicious Reviewers
FAIL Phrase Repetition
FAIL Overlapping Review History
WARN Deleted Reviews
WARN Reviewer Ease
WARN Word Count Comparison
WARN Reviewer Participation
PASS Rating Trend
PASS Brand Repeats
PASS Incentivized Reviews

Most Trusted Reviews

Great Book. However, have to read it fast or not ... [Go to full review]
Dec 12, 2019      
65% TRUST
  • Verified Purchaser
  • Take-Back Reviewer (4 deleted Reviews; avg. rating: 4.8)
  • Easy Grader (avg. rating: 4.7)


Least Trusted Reviews

This book is intense. And you need to check it ... [Go to full review]
Oct 27, 2019      
0% TRUST
  • Unverified Purchaser
  • Take-Back Reviewer (3 deleted Reviews; avg. rating: 5.0)
  • Overrepresented Participation (posted 11 Reviews)
  • Critical Reviewer (avg. rating: 3.5)


Analysis Details

Fail Unverified Purchases

89 of the 286 total reviews for this product are unverified purchases. The unverified purchasers have rated this product an average of 3.3 while the verified purchasers have rated this product an average of 4.9. 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.

from unverified purchasers

from verified purchases


3.3
4.9


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.

Fail Suspicious Reviewers

Never-Verified Reviewers


16 of the 286 reviewers have never written a verified purchase review. The Never-Verified Reviewers have rated this product an average of 2.8 while the reviewers who have written at least one verified purchase review rated this product an average of 4.5. 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.

from never-verified reviewers

from reviewers with at least one verified purchase review


2.8
4.5


Take-Back Reviewers


92 of the 286 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, the discrepancy in ratings between the Take-Back Reviewers and reviewers who don't have any deleted reviews in their history isn't significant enough to rule out the possibility of it being due to random chance.

from take-back reviewers

from reviewers without previously deleted reviews


4.5
4.4


Read more about our Suspicious Reviewers test.

Fail Phrase Repetition
Reviews that contain one of these phrases are NOT necessarily devalued; read more about how this test works here.

Common Phrases in Reviews:
3 reviews
(5.0/5)
2 reviews
(5.0/5)
3 reviews
(4.7/5)
3 reviews
(5.0/5)
3 reviews
(5.0/5)
7 reviews
(5.0/5)
7 reviews
(5.0/5)
3 reviews
(5.0/5)
Show MoreShow Less
Common Phrases in Titles:
20 reviews
(5.0/5)
2 reviews
(5.0/5)
2 reviews
(5.0/5)
4 reviews
(5.0/5)
4 reviews
(5.0/5)
9 reviews
(5.0/5)
Show MoreShow Less


26 of the 286 total reviews for this product use substantial repetitive phrases between them. These reviewers have rated this product an average of 5.0 while reviews without substantial repetitive phrases rated this product an average of 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.

from reviews with substantial repetitive phrases

from reviews without substantial repetitive phrases


5.0
4.3


Read more about our Phrase Repetition test.

Fail Overlapping Review History
Reviewers of this product have ALSO reviewed the following products:

Does not include products
from the same brand


80 of the 286 reviewers have substantial overlapping product review history. These reviewers have rated this product an average of 4.9 while the reviewers who have a more unique product review history rated this product an average of 4.2. 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.

from reviewers with substantial overlapping history

from reviewers without a substantial overlapping history


4.9
4.2


Read more about our Overlapping Review History test.

Warn Deleted Reviews

We discovered a total of 5 deleted Reviews for this product, with an average rating of 1. Even though deleted reviews don't affect the average rating, the fact that action was taken to delete reviews raises some red flags about the integrity of the reviews for the product as whole.

There are a few limitations to keep in mind regarding the Deleted Reviews test:
  1. 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.
  2. We have no information on reviews that were never published in the first place.
  3. 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.
Read more about our Deleted Reviews test.

1.0 average rating of deleted reviews

1.0


Show distribution of deleted reviews

Warn Reviewer Ease
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. While this discrepancy is rather large, it is not quite large enough to rule out the possibility of it being due random chance.

4.4 Product's Average Ease Score

4.3 Category's Average Ease Score


4.4
4.3


Read more about our Reviewer Ease test.


Warn Word Count Comparison

  • 45%
  • Have an overrepresented word count

In the graph above, we can see the distribution of review word counts for this product and the expected distribution for this category. We see the following 2 groups with a statistically significant greater concentration than what we'd expect to see:In total, we found that 128 reviews (or 45%) are within an overrepresented word count group. While this is more reviews from overrepresented word count groups than we'd expect to see, the discrepancy in ratings between reviews with overrepresented word groups and all other reviews isn’t significant enough to rule out the possibility of it being due to random chance.

from reviews with an overrepresented word count

from reviews with a properly represented word count


4.5
4.3


Read more about our Word Count Comparison test.

Warn Reviewer Participation

  • 55%
  • 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 156 reviewers (or 55%) are within an overrepresented participation group. This is an excessively high number of reviewers in overrepresented participation groups.

From reviewers with an overrepresented participation

From reviewers with a properly represented participation


4.2
4.6


Read more about our Reviewer Participation test.

Pass Rating Trend

  • 2%
  • Created over 1 day

We counted 286 reviews for this product over the span of 247 days, an average of 1.2 reviews per day. If these reviews were created randomly, there would be a 99.9% chance that we would see 6 or fewer reviews on any given day.

However, we see the following 1 day exceeding this threshold:In total, we found that 7 reviews were created on just 1 day. This is within an acceptable range and it does not appear to be significantly affecting the overall rating for this product.

from reviews created on high volume days

from reviews created on normal volume days


3.9
4.4


Read more about our Rating Trend test.

Pass Brand Repeats

Brand Repeaters


19 of the 286 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.

from Brand Repeaters

from Non-Repeaters


4.8
4.4


Read more about our Brand Repeats test.

Pass Incentivized Reviews
On Oct 3, 2016, Amazon prohibited incentivized reviews, however we still test for them since there are still millions in our dataset.

  • 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.