Academic backing vs. promises: telling signal from marketing

The signals market is full of promises without proof. A useful filter: is there peer-reviewed research explaining why that edge should exist?

Anomalies that survive usually have an economic story and decades of literature, not a six-month backtest. That doesn't guarantee it works today, but it raises the prior a lot versus an idea invented last night.

Our criterion: combine academic backing with our own honest validation (survivorship-free, net of costs, with a verdict). Neither theory alone nor curve alone: both.