I do agree with you that this website would not be an accurate place for collecting data...
HOWEVER, I will say my personal opinion on this. I am saying now that I do not know anything for sure and this is just me going by what I know from my schooling...
I have a feeling that the OP may be young, like very early college or even high school (could be why the #16 is in her/his username) and maybe using this topic for a debate paper. If this is the case, a person in this age group may not know how to conduct a real research study and have a true understanding on what statistics really represent. If this is the case here, I HIGHLY doubt this kid's paper is going to be published. It's probably more just a midterm paper to assess their position writing skills. Plus, if this were for a real high level course (like Grad school), they would most likely already know the way to obtain more accurate statistics...
Also, we don't know the objectives of the assignment. All that was said was that it was a paper about CI. Maybe the teacher/professor WANTS them to collect data and learn how to form statistics from that--as in, it doesn't really matter what or where the numbers came from, just whether or not she's able to apply her data into another form and use that information to make a debate or form a position...
