Statisticians and Economists

As my professor for Business Statistics 2 came into our first class, he gave a survey of sorts. Something simple based on percentages, and payable amounts. For example, would you choose a chance of 10% of $10, or $5 Regardless. The percentage values changed, the cash value didn’t. He repeated this with 2 separate types of values, one of which was 10% of $10, or 90% of $10, so on.

Regardless of the survey he was giving, he told us that he had given the same survey to people who were actually being payed. Our survey however was entirely hypothetical. His overall goal was to study the effects of hypothetical differences from actual differences, measuring risk when actual money was involved and not.

Now my question is, why would a statistician, research economics, and an economist use statistics? It seemed he was doing this on his own. I would recommend using the statistics on his own, and use an economist to evaluate the statistics rather than a statistician evaluate the economics.

Just my take, what do you think?