Very interesting study. I'd love to see a follow up on 2 things:
1) Did the statisticians refuse or comply with the request?
2) When they refused, how did the requester react? Were the requesters actually malicious, or just bad at statistics? If everything was fine once the statisticians explained that removing "just an outlier" wasn't a valid option, then this report isn't quite as concerning, and is maybe just an indication that more researchers need to hire statisticians to help them out.
1) Did the statisticians refuse or comply with the request?
2) When they refused, how did the requester react? Were the requesters actually malicious, or just bad at statistics? If everything was fine once the statisticians explained that removing "just an outlier" wasn't a valid option, then this report isn't quite as concerning, and is maybe just an indication that more researchers need to hire statisticians to help them out.