Bogus polls are bogus even for the good guys
Nature magazine (yes, that one) has a headline 75% of US scientists who answered Nature poll consider leaving.
This is a more honest phrasing that one usually gets in bogus poll headlines, but it’s still bogus. The ‘poll’ was
Responses were solicited earlier this month on the journal’s website, on social media and in the Nature Briefing e-mail newsletter. Roughly 1,650 people completed the survey.
The other problem with the poll is that ’emigrational ideation’, as one might call it, is a very low bar. Lots of people consider doing things. Many fewer actually do them. People having been claiming they are considering leaving the US for a long time, and we don’t know from the ‘poll’ how the current numbers compare to the usual state of affairs. Remember this cartoon, from 2006:
In fact, I think it’s quite likely that there are more scientists than before actively looking into leaving the US. Anecdotally, we are getting more enquiries here and more US applicants to advertised positions. You might think this sort of anecdata is a pretty weak basis for conclusions . You’d be right, but it’s still better than a bogus poll.
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 »
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Seems that Nature’s staff has become actual refuge for journalists who have lost jobs in the media so they would even bother with clickbait nonsense like this. In the 3rd and 4th hand republishing the caveats disappear and far more readers will take it to be more factual because of Natures ‘providence’
1 day ago