What Drew Wilson over at ZeroPaid has done in this past month is lay out in painstaking extensive detail just exactly what's wrong with the Cartel's propaganda-masquerading-as-science. The link above takes you to his conclusion piece and from there you can link back to the individual stories. It's a lot of reading, particularly if you want to read the original research - there are links to every published paper on which the analysis draws.

In science jargon what Wilson is doing is a meta-analysis. He's bringing together disparate research work over a period of time that examines multiple aspects of a single topic. Meta-analyses and meta-studies are in the news a lot these days as they tend to throw into question long-held assumptions such as the need/safety of hormone replacement therapy or PSA testing. Meta-analyses are also a good way to shed light on situations where there are conflicts of opinion and each side can bring some facts to support its claims.

In Wilson's meta-analysis he draws on studies ranging over the years 2004-2011. By taking studies from different periods of time, the analysis also helps guard against short-term trends. As we noted when LimeWire was shut down a couple years ago, significant events can produce sudden blips in long-term data trends. A meta-analysis should help avoid over-reliance on these blips.

Without stealing too much thunder from Wilson's work I wanted to quote what I think is the most important conclusion that can be drawn from this research:

[L]osses due to file-sharing are statistically indistinguishable from zero.

(h/t Cory and Boingboing for the original pointer.)