At 07:58 PM 2/14/01 +0000, Irving Scheffe wrote:
>Gene,
whether gene was correct or not, it seems problematic to me to be on the
one hand be arguing that this is really not an inference problem ... and
then say that it was perfectly reasonable for a statistician to sign
his/her name to it
i really don't know the context of this particular set of data but, SURELY,
the interest at MIT can't simply be for this particular department ... it
has to have broader implications across the institution ...
the other inherent problem, that you mention, is the use of citation rates
... they are really bogus and everyone knows it (or should) ... because,
1. like hits on a web page ... more hits do NOT mean (necessarily) more
unique visitors
2. citation rates do NOT indicate whether the person citing has actually
READ the document being cited
3. citation rates equate volume with influence and we know this is not true
... though i might be persuaded that there is NOT a negative correlation
between the two ... and maybe even SOME + r ... but, it's size CAN'T be
assumed to be large
the citation index is meant to be a proxy for INFLUENCE IN THE FIELD and,
we have no good evidence that this is true ... if you really want this to
be a proxy for influence, then you have to do more tracking to see WHAT a
particular citing person has done with the document he/she cites ...
therefore, the fact that for males the citation rate was 7000 ... and for
females, it was 1400 ... canNOT necessarily be taken as evidence that the
male has had more influence in the field than the female
i am not arguing that there is not a difference between the males and
females ... and not arguing at all that salaries should be equivalent ...
but, many (if not all) of the performance measures are SO WEAK ... that
their use for making the case one way or the other is highly suspect
and because of this, if i were a statistician, i would be very wary of
signing my name to a report of this nature without ALL KINDS OF CAVEATS
being highlighted in bold print
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