Biases in the polarization position angles in the NVSS point source
  catalogue
  We have examined the statistics of the polarization position angles
determined for point sources in the NRAO-VLA sky survey (NVSS) and find that
there is a statistically significant bias toward angles which are multiples of
45 degrees. The formal probability that the polarization angles are drawn from
a uniform distribution is exponentially small. When the sample of those NVSS
sources with polarizations detected with a signal to noise $\geq$3 is split
either around the median polarized flux density or the median fractional
polarization, the effect appears to be stronger for the more highly polarized
sources. Regions containing strong sources and regions at low galactic
latitudes are not responsible for the non-uniform distribution of position
angles. We identify CLEAN bias as the probable cause of the dominant effect,
coupled with small multiplicative and additive offsets on each of the Stokes
parameters. Our findings have implications for the extraction of science, such
as information concerning galactic magnetic fields, from large scale
polarization surveys.
