both are valid strategies, what i think is bad is when groups of people claim that broad sweeping searches are all bogus and that you must have a priori knowled

both are valid strategies, what i think is bad is when groups of people claim that broad sweeping searches are all bogus and that you must have a priori knowledge to be relevant. there should be people dredging through petabytes of cern data like this, exploratory analysis can give you insight into things you didn't know to look for. even if you find things that are bogus you figure out why and learn how to avoid it given the context of the data. to say otherwise becomes a hindrance to progress. plus its not like we have any other way of predicting earthquakes, trying to read the magnetic field to predict events sounds really promising, i'd be willing to give it a shot even if it is bogus, that's just risk assessment.