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False Discovery Iceberg in Finance Research?

Steve LeCompte | | Posted in: Big Ideas

Recent studies, based on the distribution of reported in-sample test statistics, find that publication bias in finance is modest and that most published factors are true discoveries. What about unreported testing performed during the factor discovery process? In the April 2026 revision of their paper entitled "The False Discovery Rate in Finance: Identification Failure and Search-Adjusted Estimation", Marcos Lopez de Prado and Frank Fabozzi argue that in-sample statistics alone do not reveal the false discovery rate (FDR) when there is an underlying anomaly search-and-selection (data snooping) process. Based on their experience in empirical finance and modeling of unreported testing, they conclude that:

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