Steve, you said in your editorial:

"Researchers need to be willing to evolve their algorithms as they learn more about a problem. Probably they should also assume their algorithms are not correct until they've proven their ability to predict actual trends for some period of time. "

I agree strongly with this. The CIA has put this into practice, pitting their own analysts using classified information against various other scientifically tracked methods of probability analysis. You can read about one of these projects here: http://www.npr.org/blogs/parallels/2014/04/02/297839429/-so-you-think-youre-smarter-than-a-cia-agent

This is a years long project being tested for reproducible results over time using different groups of analysts. It is hard to convince a company needing a stock boost right now to invest the time and money in scientific accountability. But the long game seems to be paying off handsomely for the CIA.