Yes, at every startup I was in, the stats nerds were in fact well-known to tell the nontechnical people and even the devs that what they were doing wasn't going

Yes, at every startup I was in, the stats nerds were in fact well-known to tell the nontechnical people and even the devs that what they were doing wasn't going to work, or rather that we didn't have good evidence that it would work. This is such a well-known feature of stats nerds that it's a meme.