Thanks Jim. Good to know I have a back-up option in case I decide to leave finance!

In truth, often these comments are a way for academics to plug their own research. I am still getting to know the world of academia and it is the way they market their research. That way they encourage people to download and cite their papers. It is the academic-equivalent to clickbait.

What matters most of all is to make sure university professors do not kid themselves (or their readers) in believing that their findings are reliable.

Given that performance data in PE are incomplete, easy to manipulate or manufactured and, for recent vintages, interim, I find it slightly naive, even potentially dangerous, for scholars to claim that they are using comprehensive and pristine data.

That is one of the reasons for this series: to debunk all those myths. The one PE proponents genuinely seem to believe in is discredited by what we call the GIGO principle: garbage in, garbage out.