The admins are monitoring several accounts which appear to be engaged in blatant gaming behavior such as “dumping” points from a shill account or “throwing” points across a leaderboard deadline, in opposition to any sensible accuracy-guided forecasting strategy.  Most of these accounts will probably be disabled and eventually removed from all leaderboards.  Disablings will be announced.  Forecasters with permanently disabled accounts will have to start over.  The SciCast team is examining some non-trading variables for possible exonerating evidence.

Thanks to forecasters for continued forecasts & comments, and high-quality balanced discussion of potential cheating — esp. in comments and on the users group. The discussion has helped improve our detection models.

We will continue to monitor and review forecasts at least until after the accuracy contest closes. SciCast may also institute other system changes if required to ensure trust in SciCast and accuracy of the overall results.