  In a recent article, Falessi et al. (2017) call for a deeper understanding of
the pros and cons of using students and professionals in experiments. The
authors state: we have observed too many times that our papers were rejected
because we used students as subjects. Good experiments with students are
certainly a valuable asset in the body of research in software engineering.
Papers should thus not be rejected solely on the ground that the subjects are
students. However, the distribution in skill is different for students and
professionals. Since previous studies have shown that skill may have a
moderating effect on the treatment of participants, we are concerned that
studies involving developers with only low to medium skill (i.e., students) may
result in wrong inferences about which technology, method or tool is better in
the software industry. We therefore provide suggestions for how experiments
with students can be improved and also comment on some of the alleged drawbacks
of using professionals that Falessi et al. point out.
