I love the idea of what Putnam is trying to do: “critically examine key investment theories, strategies and assumptions and suggest changes that can achieve better outcomes for companies, institutions, plan sponsors, investment advisers and individual investors.”
Most people just assume that the conventional wisdom is both conventional and wisdom when it is often neither. However, if they truly examined things with an impartial eye they would realize that most of their actively managed funds that are basically closet indexers are useless. Doubt we will see that coming out of the study.