Evidence Levels and Missing Data

Grading evidence

Ask what kind of thing each claim actually is.

• Reported fact from a regulatory filing
• Derived measure calculated from reported facts
• Estimate or projection made by someone
• Opinion, narrative or expectation

Point-in-time discipline

Research is only honest if it uses information that was actually available at the time. Using later-known information to evaluate an earlier moment — lookahead bias — makes any analysis look far better than reality.

This is why our own research records the date each piece of evidence became available and evaluates companies only on what was known then.

Missing data stays missing

When evidence is unavailable, our platform labels it unavailable rather than substituting an assumption or an average. A company is never ranked using evidence it does not have.