Karl Popper has championed the idea that all progress in knowledge results from efforts to falsify, not to confirm, our theories. Whether or not this hypothesis is true in general, it’s certainly the right attitude to bring to trading research. You have to try your best to disprove your results. You have to try to kill your little creation. Try to think of everything that could be wrong with your system, and everything that’s suspicious about it. If you challenge your system by sincerely trying to disprove it, then maybe, just maybe, it’s valid.
