New York ? Radio talk show host Dori Monson knows the Internet surveys he reads on air are bogus. But he doesn’t care.

Monson said his main goal is to generate debate.

“The statistical validity of the numbers is not as important as the debate it will inspire,” said Monson, who hosts a daily show on KIRO-AM in Seattle.

Professional pollsters worry that the proliferation of unscientific online surveys, in which people with vested interests can easily tilt the scales, mislead the public.

And people like Monson show how such pseudo-surveys can be misused, despite efforts by some news organizations to distinguish online tallies from legitimate surveys that are based on random samples.

Warren Mitofsky, who used to direct polls for CBS News, said online surveys at news sites  even with disclaimers  are irresponsible.

“All they are doing is playing games,” Mitofsky said. “If something comes from a reputable news organization, as a member of the public I would expect it to be reliable.”

In recent weeks, online surveys have asked visitors to rate President Bush’s State of the Union speech and opine on whether the tattered American flag from ground zero was too political for the Olympics.

During the Super Bowl, Internet users were asked about coaches’ strategies and their picks for most valuable player.

Television networks often promote the surveys on air, and CNN’s Wolf Blitzer recently read the results of one, along with a disclaimer that “this poll is not scientific.”

“We call it a quick vote and not a poll, so it’s not confused with a scientific sampling,” said Mitch Gelman, executive producer of CNN’s Web site.

MSNBC has a 900-word explanation about the difference, though users must click on a link to get it. Out of thousands who participate, a few hundred do so each day.

A select audience

Savvy decision-makers are not likely to confuse Web surveys for sound research, but everyday users generally don’t think about the difference, said Sreenath Sreenivasan, a journalism professor at Columbia University.

The harm comes when users start shaping their views based on what they think everyone else is thinking, Sreenivasan said. Even on seemingly innocent questions like favorite car color, he said, a buyer may choose a color believing it will have better resale value.

Self-selection is the chief problem with online surveys. Because users choose to participate, the surveys attract people who have time, are comfortable with the Net or are strongly opinionated.

Another major limitation of Internet surveys rests with the fact that 46 percent of Americans don’t use the Internet. And at most a Web survey can reflect what users of that particular site think.

Consider the results of one online survey at Time magazine’s Web site. Visitors were asked to grade Bush’s job as president. Nearly 80 percent chose either A or F, suggesting heavy participation by partisans.

At ZDNet’s U.K. Web site in December, participants favored Sun Microsystems’ Java programming language over Microsoft’s .NET for building Web services. By early January, .NET took over as the leader.

ZDNet found that a high percentage of votes came from Microsoft employees. Logs showed that many responded after receiving an e-mail that said, “PLEASE STOP AND VOTE FOR .NET!”

Getting interactive

The results of online surveys sometimes mirror those of telephone polls, but it’s impossible to know when a Web survey will be right or wrong.

Still, news organizations justify them as something fun and unique to the Internet. They say they need interactive features to keep visitors glued to their sites so they are more attractive to advertisers.

Polls seem like an easy answer.

“Online polls are really more like bells and whistles,” said Richard Stengel, managing editor of Time.com. “They are ornaments on the tree.”

The Washington Post’s site dropped political questions about four years ago after results kept swinging back and forth, but it still uses online surveys for sports.

“Questions like, ‘Is this the greatest Super Bowl?’ Â the future of the world hardly depends on the outcome,” said Douglas Feaver, the site’s executive editor.