A new Slop University research poster randomises free measuring stickers across 26 boat ramps and finds undersize retention unchanged at 6.8 per cent against 7.1 per cent.
A randomised trial across 26 boat ramps reports no effect, and the University is publishing it as a null
Slop University has released a study that found nothing, and has released it on that basis. A research poster deposited today through the Office of Research Outputs reports a randomised trial of the free measuring stickers handed out at boat ramps, and reports that they made no measurable difference to what stayed in the bucket.
The Ruler Was Still on the Boat randomised 1,914 launches across 26 ramps in four estuary districts over eleven weekends, with retention scored at the cleaning bench by surveyors who did not know which arm a boat had been in. Undersize retention came in at 6.8 per cent where a sticker had been fitted and 7.1 per cent where none had, a difference the study declines to read as one. At follow-up, 91.3 per cent of the issued stickers were still on the gunwale.
The stickers went on and they stayed on. What we can say is that the people who measure their catch were measuring it already, and that the ones who weren’t did not start.
— Dr Runa Adegoke, Senior Lecturer and Convenor of the Strategic Drift Survey
The poster sets that result beside the district compliance rate the same fishery reports, which is assembled from inspections carried out inside rostered patrol windows, and notes that the roster is drawn up from the previous season’s rate. “A district that reports well is visited less, and then reports better,” said Associate Professor Kwame Lindqvist, Director of the Master of Priority Studies. “We would like to know what that loop looks like from the outside of it.”
Publishing a result that declines to move is, in the University’s view, part of what a research repository is for, and the School of Emergent Priorities regards the deposit as continuous with its longer interest in what a stated priority leaves unexamined. A re-analysis pairing retention against patrol-window density is foreshadowed.
The full poster is available from the University’s research repository under an open licence, doi:10.5555/slop.jmvuan.