Juror Sensible Researcher may have put it best when he explained why the predictions are so flimsy. Research companies are aces at the multiplication part. Still, for all of the anecdotal, circumstantial and observational evidence the court has collected against the research companies, the central question is whether their data helped illuminate risk and whether it presumed to predict reward. The numbers are about size and magnitude, not exactitude. The court had to agree that more information about definitional discrepancies between the companies and the government would have been useful.
Methodology is, as always key.
The court was hard-pressed to imagine how methodology could account for all of the discrepancy. The court cannot overlook the large discrepancy in the numbers supplied by the government and the defendants, and thus, believes the defendents are guilty. We sense this issue will come before the bench again in the near future. We can only urge the research community to set out ethical guidelines on how it will set about collecting and analyzing data and, most importantly, framing its conclusions. Only then will it earn back the trust we sense it has fractured.