Seattle, all lit up with tech pride. (Jesse Hawkins, via Flickr.)

A new ranking by Scientific American magazine names Seattle the top city for technology in the country — ahead of other tech meccas including San Francisco, Boston, New York City and Los Angeles.

But before we get all puffed up with hometown pride, it’s worth noting that the magazine’s research isn’t grounded in its own boots-on-the-ground scientific investigation. Instead, it’s more of a meta-ranking — compiling various tech-related city rankings from other publications and creating an aggregate score based on those.

One of the inputs used by SciAm: A 2007 ranking of tech towns by Wired magazine that’s so old it took into account factors including the number of Circuit City stores per capita in each city. (The electronics retailer went bankrupt and shut down two years ago.)

Another was this 2009 ranking of America’s most-wired cities by Forbes magazine. Again, not exactly the most timely info.

Acknowledges Scientific American in its post, “Not all of the above lists were created using conventional statistical or scientific methods, therefore their validity could be suspect.”

In other words, not exactly the most rigorous research. But who cares? We’re No. 1!

(Thanks to Isaac Alexander for the tip.)

Like what you're reading? Subscribe to GeekWire's free newsletters to catch every headline

Job Listings on GeekWork

Find more jobs on GeekWork. Employers, post a job here.