Cherry-picking and balanced reporting: are you seeing all the holes?

Cherry-picking is presenting the best drill results in a way that leaves a misleading impression of the rest, for example headlining one strong hole from a program where most holes were weak. The JORC Code requires balanced reporting, and the quickest check is to count how many holes were drilled, how many have been reported and what the weaker ones returned.

What balanced reporting means

The JORC Code 2012 says reporting of selected information, such as isolated assays or isolated drill holes, without placing it in perspective is unacceptable. In JORC Table 1 Section 2, under "balanced reporting", it says that where comprehensive reporting of all exploration results is not practicable, representative reporting of both low and high grades and/or widths should be practised to avoid misleading reporting.

ASX has made the same point in its published guidance. Its Guidance Note 8 says announcement headlines should give a fair and balanced view of the content, and an ASX Compliance Update in 2025 named balanced reporting of exploration results as a focus area, expressing concern about headlines that feature only the best results, which may be unrepresentative. ASX can require a correction or retraction of an announcement it considers misleading.

Holes drilled vs holes reported

This is the single most useful check. Most drilling announcements tell you, somewhere, how many holes and metres were drilled in the program. Compare that with the drill-hole table.

Example: a hypothetical explorer says it has "completed 14 RC holes for 2,380m" at a prospect. The announcement reports four holes, all with significant intercepts. What happened to the other ten?

There are several legitimate possibilities:

• Assays pending. Labs often return results in batches, and companies report as results arrive. A good announcement says which holes are pending and when results are expected.
• No significant intercept (NSI). Holes that returned nothing above the reporting cut-off should still appear in the drill-hole table, marked NSI or similar.
• Holes testing a different target, to be reported separately.

The problem arises when none of these is stated and the missing holes simply vanish. If later announcements never report them, or report them quietly in a quarterly, that pattern is worth noting.

Assays pending: the staged release

Batching is normal, but it has a side effect: the first batch is often the holes the geologists were most excited about, sometimes because they saw strong mineralisation in the core. Investors then extrapolate from the best holes. The later batches, released weeks or months afterwards, can receive less attention even if they change the picture.

Ask:

1. Which holes were prioritised for assay, and why?
2. Does the announcement give a timeline for the rest?
3. When the rest arrived, did they confirm or dilute the first batch?

DrillScore's announcements page lists each company's releases in order, which makes it easier to follow one program from first batch to last.

Headline-hole selection

Headlines are short and companies understandably lead with their best result. Some patterns make the headline less representative:

• "Up to" grades. "Assays up to 48g/t gold" usually means a single sample, not an interval. It says nothing about width.
• The "including" interval as the headline. "6m at 9.8g/t" leading the release when the hole was really 48m at 1.6g/t including that 6m. See smearing and the nugget effect.
• Best-of-program framing. A headline of "bonanza grades" over one hole, when the table shows most holes at under 10 gram-metres.
• Old results repackaged. Previously reported intercepts restated alongside new ones, making a new batch look stronger. Check the dates in the table.
• Metal equivalents in the headline without stated recoveries. See metal equivalents explained.

A worked tally

Suppose the hypothetical explorer's full table, once all 14 holes are out, looks like this:

The first announcement headlined the 90 gram-metre hole and reported the three 10-50 holes. Every reported hole was a "hit". Across all 14 holes, though, the hit rate above 10 gram-metres is 4 in 14, and six holes found nothing significant. Both statements are factually accurate; only the second gives the balanced picture JORC expects. Not every program like this is a failure, either: six misses around one strong hole might simply mean the mineralised shoot is narrow, which is useful information.

How to spot cherry-picking

Why companies do it, and why it matters

Juniors need investor attention to raise money, and a strong headline can lift the share price ahead of a capital raising. Most companies report fairly, and a strong headline on its own proves nothing. But the incentive is real, and the investor who checks the full table is better placed than one who reads only the headline. The cash runway guide explains why results and raisings often arrive close together.

DrillScore counts holes reported against holes stated as drilled where an announcement gives both, and lists material gaps on the red flags page. This is a description of what was disclosed, not an allegation against any company. Everything here is general information; it is not advice about any particular stock. If you have seen a program unfold in a way worth sharing, the community page collects investor experiences.

The short version

• JORC requires results to be placed in perspective, with representative low and high grades when not everything is reported.
• Count holes drilled against holes reported; the gap should be explained as pending, NSI or a separate target.
• "Up to" grades, "including" headlines and repackaged old holes make headlines less representative.
• Follow a program across its later batches before drawing conclusions from the first.
• A missing hole is a question to ask, not proof of wrongdoing.