I don't have much of a stats background... The first question that jumped to mind is whether or not the quality of the pitch could have affected the perceived attractiveness (could the investors have seen the people with better pitches as more attractive?). Can that sort of thing be controlled for somehow?
Your original point still stands. It's possible that the men chosen to do the readings just so happened to be better readers/pitchers than the women, even with the exact same script. It's hard to think of a foolproof way to control for that, other than getting a large enough sample and recruiting both men and women of approximately equal experience. Neither of those is a perfect solution, though.
Theoretically, you'd want some way to have the pitches read with precisely the same cadences and intonations, but have the ability to just swap out a female voice for a male voice. One could imagine a computer program which "female-izes" a man's reading, though I doubt anything like this exists in a form which produces a perfectly realistic sounding female voice.
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I don't have much of a stats background... The first question that jumped to mind is whether or not the quality of the pitch could have affected the perceived attractiveness (could the investors have seen the people with better pitches as more attractive?). Can that sort of thing be controlled for somehow?
Edit: ah, the same pitches were read. Nevermind.
Your original point still stands. It's possible that the men chosen to do the readings just so happened to be better readers/pitchers than the women, even with the exact same script. It's hard to think of a foolproof way to control for that, other than getting a large enough sample and recruiting both men and women of approximately equal experience. Neither of those is a perfect solution, though.
Theoretically, you'd want some way to have the pitches read with precisely the same cadences and intonations, but have the ability to just swap out a female voice for a male voice. One could imagine a computer program which "female-izes" a man's reading, though I doubt anything like this exists in a form which produces a perfectly realistic sounding female voice.