Topic: How To Invest

What is Pat’s commentary for the week of September 26, 2023

Article Excerpt

Over the years, you may have noted more and more media references to all sorts of studies and investigations that claim to have made hard-to-believe breakthrough discoveries in various fields—cancer-curing food supplements, pharmaceuticals that cure baldness, cold fusion techniques that can create energy out of worthless or extremely cheap materials, and so on. These claims appear so often that few people pay much attention to them. Recently The Wall Street Journal ran an article by science reporter Nidhi Subbaraman entitled “The band of debunkers busting bad scientists.” She told the story of three scientists who gained academic renown for debunking published studies built on faulty or fraudulent data. The three are among a growing number of scientists in various fields around the world who moonlight as data detectives, sifting through studies published in scholarly journals for evidence of fraud. They report their work on a blog called Data Colada. According to Retraction Watch, a website that keeps a tally, at least 5,500…