One problem with this research
There is no mention of how many changes did an individual pull request gone through. Assuming the author is good with communication skills, they would be able to accommodate changes (requested by other contributors or perhaps project maintainers) into their pull request and there would be some healthy discussion around it, which obviously increases chances of the PR being applied. I gather there is a strong positive correlation of being able to discuss and amend your change, and being an active member of the community, for reasons which are outside of the programming skill alone.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
