Don’t pay for trash
numbers: How to spot a scam (in stem cell market forecasting)
Digital Journal, a reporting startup examining the impact of
science, technology, and digital culture on the global landscape, recently put
together a forecast on Allogeneic Stem Cells and their market for use and
development: “Allogeneic Stem Cells Market Emerging Trends, Impact of Covid-19,
Development Status, Fact and Figures, SWOT Analysis, Forecast up to 20281.”
Some of their major findings represent a synthesis of many
sources and data-points, which is necessary work, but doesn’t amount to much
novel generation of data. In fact, as far as I can find, their report and
methodology listed no expert or researcher interviews, seeing fit to collect
data from releases from apparent pharmaceutical companies across a few
countries. However, one of those companies listed as a major player is
STEMCell, a laboratory product company producing compounds and reagents
necessary for doing stem cell research, rather than one engaged in creating
treatments based on allogenic stem cells and their properties and utilization.
I’m highly skeptical of their methodology and the way in
which they find themselves marketing their report. On their website, you find
several similar reports, with identical wording and phrasing, with literally
only the key word, for our case “allogeneic stem cells” changed. In addition,
they do a really good job link-mining to increase their SEO. They include links
to Marketwatch reports that they very well may have used to generate the
majority of their analytics as means to further engagement and linkage in
search-engine analysis.
In addition, the claim that “the allogeneic stem cells
market is expected to witness market growth at a rate of 12.04% in the forecast
period of 2021 to 2028 and is expected to reach USD 1,534.18 million by 2028,” doesn’t seem to be
backed up by other purportedly similar analyses. And in fact, it is eerily
identical to “Stem Cell Global Market Report 2021: COVID-19 Growth and Change
to 20302,” in both syntactical phrasing and word-choice. This one,
however, being put together by Research and Markets, a more reputable and
vetted source cited by industry professionals doing marketing research. This
reputable report lists the reality at something closer to “grow[ing] from
$20.59 billion in 2020 to $22.87 billion in 2021 at a compound annual growth
rate (CAGR) of 11.1%. The market is expected to reach $36 billion in 2025 at a
CAGR of 12%3.”
So before you go ahead and pay hundreds of dollars for
fraudulent market research (as is in the case of Digital Journal, whose search
result is exceedingly high due to the way they manipulate search engine data
results), make sure to check your source and look for a second opinion.
Hopefully you’ll check twice to see where you’re getting your data from.
Written by Jeremiah Ockunzzi, courtesy of Dr. Bart
Rademaker, MD.
