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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Anselyn" data-source="post: 6859448" data-attributes="member: 55456">Er, yes. As in lies, damned lies and statistics - and 77% of imaginary respondents thought a patronising writing style doesn't endear the reader to the write.  Yes. I was not advocating this management style. I was commenting that I thought this is where we're at now - and I'm happy to be wrong. For my part I get asked to comment on questionnaires that tell me that the responding 45% of my students (say 85/190) have given me a score of 3.93/5 - as if those three sig figs are meaningful. I'm a physics academic at an English university. We're the fifth-ranked department in the Complete University Guide 2016 for Physics and Astronomy departments (You see - measured and judged by tables).  "91% of our research is world leading / internationally excellent. The results of REF 2014 confirm the excellence of the research carried out at Bath." REF 2014 - official government measure of research outputs.Please do feel free to expound. I am interested - and honestly don't think that I'm such a social misfit that I wouldn't notice if these things were going on (but I wouldn't, would I).  Here are some thoughts I've had about this today.I. As an academic I/we, of course, get some flack for not living in the real world - and its business practices to which we should aspire. This just seems to suggest that we get some things nicely right.II. Is this a cultural issue? I believe there is a deep British belief that what you do behind closed doors is up to you and not part of your public life. Of course, the French are even more liberal than us on this when it comes to sexual behaviour.  Is some of this about required standards of conformity in American life?III. I agree that social media is changing things. We should respect other's' decisions about control of their public persona.</blockquote>

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