Chiropractic Economics Blog

Today is April Fool’s Day, and perhaps you were the butt of a harmless prank, such as these:

About two years ago, a colleague in our office found a telephone message left on his desk while he was out to lunch. It asked him to call Jay Raffe at a local telephone number. He didn’t know the man, but he picked up the phone and called the number. When the phone rang, the person on the other end answered, “Jacksonville Zoo.”

Jay Raffe. Giraffe. He still laughs at himself for falling for the oldest joke in the book.

Did you put Peeps into your kids’ Easter baskets? Peeps are those marshmallow confections that look like little chickens. They used to come in only one color — yellow — but now their sugar is dyed blue, green, and purple, in addition to yellow. All of the colors taste the same.

When my husband confessed his liking for Peeps (which are only manufactured at Easter time), I stocked up on them.

One recent night when I doled out our Peep dessert, I sampled both a blue and a purple Peep, while he munched on a blue one. I innocently said, “They taste different!” He looked at me skeptically, said, “No, they don’t,” then took the blue Peep out of my hand and bit its head off. “See,” he said. “The blue one tastes the same as all the others!”

When I smiled broadly, he realized the joke was on him. We both laughed.

These are innocent pranks. No one was inconvenienced and the person on the receiving end of the joke didn’t lose anything except a small bit of dignity.

This week I began the very time-consuming task of analyzing the data you provided for our 11th Annual Salary & Expense Survey. This is an enormous task, even though we use powerful survey software to gather and crunch data.

Over the years that I’ve analyzed this data, I’ve learned that the first thing to do is to review the raw data. Mistakes can easily happen. For example: One question asks the respondent to input an annual salary in whole numbers. A few people forget to put zeros on the number, and instead of entering (for example) $35000, they may input $35. Obviously, the lack of zeros would skew the data.

I reviewed all the data and thought I had caught all of the errors, so I began to do my analysis. I compiled information on several sets of statistics, and was typing in the range of ages of respondents on my data sheet. The software told me the age range was from 26 through 100.

A 100-year-old chiropractor? Unlikely. So, I looked at the information the 100-year-old respondent entered. I followed the data to the end, and came to an e-mail address: nobody@nobodyherecares.com.

I’m sure the person who went to the trouble to input phony data throught he (or she) was being funny. I didn’t laugh.

Why would someone go to the trouble to enter fake data? Why would someone want to jeopardize the integrity of the only survey on the income and expenses of chiropractors — a survey whose results are reported by the U.S. Department of Labor in its Occupational Outlook Handbook?

This was a sophomoric gesture that caused much inconvenience. Fortunately, I caught the sabotage in time. I hope it never happens again. I would prefer for the jokester to just opt out of receiving our e-mail.

But in case the person doesn’t, the next time I conduct a survey, I will scan the raw data with an eagle eye before I begin to analyze the results.

Until next time,