The Talking-up Scotland fund raiser primarily, finishing in 8 days, to enable the recruitment of some research assistance, in order to take pressure off me [74 in June and tiring] and hopefully to further improve the blog, has made a good start. To contribute, only if you can (!) go to: Talking-up Scotland - a Politics crowdfunding project in Ayr by Professor John Robertson

Professor John Robertson OBA

The BMA in Scotland have a terrible track record of totally useless surveys that are, nevertheless sucked up by the media.

Today, the Herald claims

Majority of Scotland’s ethnic minority doctors witness racism

Needless to say, their survey results do not support any such claim.

The BMA has 154 000 members and so around 15 000 in Scotland. Dr Kennedy’s team got only ‘715 responses from members and non-members from health boards in Scotland.’

First, this is not a scientific, structured, sample but a tiny ‘squeaky wheel‘, self-selecting sample where the huge group of non-responders can be reasonably taken to not have experienced or seen racist incidents.

Second, even if we accept the sample as in any way useful, it is still only 5% of the whole population of doctors in Scotland.

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