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> "Star Scientists" (defined as 99th percentile income earners, 300K+) No! The definition they use is "95th percentile of patents awarded", then they assume th
by tom_mellior 9y ago
> "Star Scientists" (defined as 99th percentile income earners, 300K+)
No! The definition they use is "95th percentile of patents awarded", then they assume that these people are probably in the 99th income percentile. But they present no data to validate this assumption (at least in this summary of the journal article).
Personally, I'm not convinced that the assumption holds.
Edit: Also, the figure of 300K+ doesn't appear in the post, and a very quick poke around Wikipedia didn't confirm that number for the 99th income percentile. Do you have a source?
- saas_co_de 9y agoYeah, the methodology is weird. I got the income info from here: https://seekingalpha.com/article/4109731-united-states-income-brackets-percentiles-2017 https://seekingalpha.com/article/4109731-united-states-incom...
- tom_mellior 9y agoThanks! I do note this only refers to "workers" (they give an exact definition), so does not include people who only have unearned income. I don't know how much that would distort the data at the top.
- notahacker 9y agoFinding an objective definition for "star scientists" isn't easy, but the one they've chosen does have the deficiency of being more likely to identify patent trolls than most Nobel Prize winners. Suspect the former group's choice of domicile is much more closely correlated with tax advantage than the latter's.