"Even if 1,000 cards are proven to be altered/recolored, this will be talked about in the context of "1000 out of 2 million). (0.05% error rate or 99.95% accurate"
This begs the question of how many others they didn't catch (anyone with a half a brain and honesty knows there are more). And, if they were fooled by these thousand, how can they, of all people, be the ones able to tell us those were the only ones they didn't catch.
And if that is their PR mantra, that just shows the hobby that they are liars. And beyond the stupid and someone lacking common sense, the #1 type of person you don't have going into authentication is a liar. Authentication and authentication theory is a field of mine-- I work for museums, am professionally certified in museum sciences, wrote two peer-reviewed textbooks on the subject used in university museum studies graduate school programs (
link), and was a museum studies research coordinator at the University of Washington--, and honesty and sincerity are
required qualities. If a student was caught cheating on a test or paper, there is no way I would allow them to be an authenticator.
If PSA can't be honest and sincere about their authentication work, they should not be, and never should have been, in the authentication business. As simple as that. Authentication is an intellectual and academic field about finding and expressing facts and knowledge, not an "insurance" or "financial backing your investment" business.
And if collectors think it's okay for an authenticator of their items to lie, deny, cover up facts and lie about their authentication capabilities, they have oatmeal for brains, or, as is obviously the case for many dealers and collectors, not really using them as authenticators.
And I'll say it-- as I've said it many times before-- the grading systems and registry system are intellectually dishonest ('intellectual honesty' and 'intellectual dishonesty' are big words with me) and long have been. Anyone with mathematical, scientific or statistics background, or even basic logic and common sense, would see the gaping holes and logical/mathematical nonsense in the registry numerical system. The registry is fine as an ilde game or a fun website for posting your collection, and if collectors use it as that that's fine by me, but that hobby pricing is in part based on it and the hobby takes the numerical rankings seriously is nonsensical.
And, while I'm a lawyer and may not know law on the chatboard, a link to show that I know what I'm talking about in the fields of authentication, philosophic logic and scientific/knowledge models/representations.
Link