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17.13 What else do I need to be careful about when

reporting data?
Look at the following text entitled Postdocs and the science of being expendable ,

which reports on the difficulties encountered by postdoctoral researchers when
entering the labor market. Can you see a problem?

Postdoc status is highly inflated: its supposedly "academic and cultural value" is not mir-
rored by the real price "investors" are willing to pay for it. The current system is designed
to get cheap AND specialized labour. The average annual salary for neo postdoctoral
researchers is about $44,000 in the US, while stipends vary greatly in European countries
with an average of 1,500 euros/month for Italian scientists vs 4,560 euros/month pay for
their Dutch counterparts.
The problem is that the author has given an annual value in dollars, followed by two
monthly values in euros. This makes it hard for the reader to make a comparison (it
would have been helpful to have the equivalent annual salary for postdocs in Europe,

which is significantly less than in the US and is, at the time of writing, €30,000).
Also, is the author comparing two identical situations? Are neo postdoctoral
researchers the same as scientists ? And are a salary and stipend the same thing?
How can the reader be sure?

Finally, a very punctilious editor might comment that a symbol ($) is used when
referring to the US dollar, but not when referring to the euro.