H-E-L-P! Question about Hindi--a moment of your time

[v kr.pAsundar]

Michael T. Wescoat says:
=> Attention all Hindi speakers,
=> 
=> I am on the lip of getting a linguistics paper published, but the
=> editor wants me to collect more data about Hindi. [...]
=> If you are a native speaker of Hindi, may I please beg a
=> moment of your time?
=> 
=> First would you please answer the following question:
=> 
=>     Do you regard yourself as a native speaker of Hindi?
=>     YOUR RESPONSE [yes/no]:
=> 
=> Next, would you rate the following sentences [...]?

I would like to very gently question this research
methodology as being capable of producing publishable
results.

It is no doubt very effective in producing quick *partial*
confirmation/denial of a hypothesis.  It would thus allow us
to prune out unlikely theories, and allow us to concentrate
on more rigourous verification of the likely ones.

But i, for one, would not find it acceptable to simply
compute statistics based on email responses to a simple
questionnaire such as this one.
"Do you regard yourself ..." is scarcely a thorough test of
fluency in or familiarity with a language.

I would like to hear from others who (dis)agree with me on
this point.

peace,
--kr.pA