Bogus polls don’t work even for the good guys
There’s a story in the Times Higher Education Supplement about a Nuffield Council report “The Culture of Scientific Research in the UK.” The lead in the THES story is
More than a quarter of scientists have felt tempted or under pressure to compromise the integrity of their research, according to a report on the ethics culture at universities.
On the other hand, since the report also found that 56% of scientists were women, the UK must be doing something right.
Seriously, there is a lot to be concerned about — especially in the light of the recent case of Professor Stefan Grimm at Imperial College — but that makes it more important to be careful about facts, not less important.
The survey that formed the quantitative part of the report had just under 1000 responses over three months, which is a substantially lower fraction of the target population than the NZ Association of Scientists managed for similar surveys in much less time. Researchers in biosciences are over-represented (57% of respondents vs 34% of university scientists, according to the report), and I think postdocs probably are too (30% of respondents).
The report itself is careful to describe the percentages as “of survey respondents” — it’s THES that dropped this distinction. As usual, it’s the qualitative information in the report that is most useful, and it’s a pity it has been pushed aside by unreliable numbers.
Thomas Lumley (@tslumley) is Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Auckland. His research interests include semiparametric models, survey sampling, statistical computing, foundations of statistics, and whatever methodological problems his medical collaborators come up with. He also blogs at Biased and Inefficient See all posts by Thomas Lumley »