“Why the Heck Did the Trinity Study Get Approved By its Peer-Review Committee? Part of the Scientific Process Is Acknowledging Errors When They Are Discovered. Once There Was a Delay, It Became Embarrassing to the Buy-and-Holders for Them to Acknowledge the Cover-Up. If We Are Going to Ban Honest Academic Research, We Would Be Better Off Just to Shut Down All Academic Research.”

Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for another blog entry at this site:

Looks like ESI wrote an article about you on his website:

https://esimoney.com/beware-of-fake-money-experts-with-no-accomplishments/

I don’t think that I agree with every word in this article but I am fine with a good bit of it. I think the article is worth reading.

The headline is: “Beware of Fake Money Experts with No Accomplishments”

I don’t put myself forward as an expert re stock investing in any general sense. I don’t have the background or education or training. I have said many times that anyone who follows my ideas on stock investing solely because I advance them is a darn fool.

There’s one exception to that rule. I am an expert on the long-running (38 years!) cover-up of the discrediting of Buy-and-Hold in the peer-reviewed research of Robert Shiller. That is a huge story. The cover-up is the biggest public policy issue facing the United States today. And exposing the cover-up is just the sort of thing that a journalist does. You don’t need a Ph.D. in Economics to see that people who rely on death threats and threats to get academic researchers fired from their jobs are working a con.

I also am a reluctant expert on the how-to implications of Shiller’s work. I don’t feel entirely comfortable writing about that aspect of the story. But it is work that has to be done and everyone else is afraid to take it on given the behavior of you Goons and so I had no choice but to do it myself. I always encourage others to get involved. And, when others get involved, it is my intention to fade into the background a good bit. I don’t think that I should be advising people as to what to do with their retirement money. But someone needs to give people accurate and honest advice. So I have been forced into the role.

If it is true that valuations affect long-term returns (there is 38 years of peer-reviewed research showing this to be so), then there is zero chance that the safe withdrawal rate is always the same number. So why the heck did the Trinity study get approved by its peer-review committee? Shiller’s research was on the books at the time that the Trinity study was approved. Huh? What the f? That’s the problem. Greaney would have included a valuation adjustment in his study had he seen the Trinity authors include one. So that was a big mess-up.

I would have preferred to have seen Greaney acknowledge the error in his study in 24 hours. Then the Retire Early community could have worked together to come up with accurate numbers. And of course we could have run our work product past the Trinity authors and other people with expertise in the field. We cannot do that today. We don’t have the cooperation that we need to get the job done. But I am sure up for it. I believe that we will have the cooperation we need down the road a piece (after the next price crash).

The reason why I became a Buy-and-Holder once upon a time is that I liked the idea that they rooted their advice in peer-reviewed research. I believe in science. So I love the idea of making investment advice more scientific. But part of the scientific process is acknowledging errors when they are discovered. We should have had a national debate on the many ways in which Buy-and-Hold had to be changed as a result of Shiller’s work way back in 1981.

Once there was a delay, it became embarrassing to the Buy-and-Holders for them to acknowledge the cover-up. Now that it has gone on for 38 years, there is a mountain of embarrassment and we are in a real fix. None of that is my doing. I have been calling for the launching of a national debate for 17 years. I have been trying to move the ball forward.

There’s nothing less expert than advancing death threats and threat of career destruction to block knowledge from moving forward. If we are going to ban honest academic research, we would be better off just to shut down all academic research. Having no research is better than having only dishonest research. That should not be a controversial statement. If there weren’t so much money in Buy-and-Hold, not one person on the planet would oppose the idea of opening every site on the internet to honest posting on the last 38 years of peer-reviewed research in this field.

World Expert (on the Buy-and-Hold Con!) Rob