In practice, random samples are always taken by means of a well-defined procedure. A procedure is a set of rules, a sequence of steps written down and exactly followed. Even so, some bias may remain in the sample. Consider the problem of designing a sample to predict the result of an election poll. All known methods have their problems, and the results of an election are often different from predictions based on a sample. If you collect opinions by using telephones, or by meeting people in the street, you won't ask people who don't answer phone calls or who don't walk on the street. Therefore, in cases like this a completely neutral sample is never possible. In such cases a statistician will think about how to measure the amount of bias, and there are ways to estimate this.