Dubious Deductions from AGN Survey Data

Abstract

AbstractThe participants in this meeting are almost all carrying out the hard work of making many different types of AGN surveys. Since it’s so much easier to criticize other people’s work than to do actual work myself, I’ll just present some demurs regarding recent papers drawing conclusions from various AGN survey data. In particular I’ll mention some questionable interpretations of surveys of Seyfert 2 near-UV polarization; interpreting the results of searches for polarized broad H-alpha lines in Seyfert 2s; testing the beam model for radio galaxies and quasars; testing the unification of Seyfert spectral types with a torus; and finally testing the energy sources for ULIRGs, especially those with LINER optical spectra. Only the polarized broad H-α results are examined in detail here.