"All these studies tell us is it is much more complicated than just trying to fix that number because that is a surrogate marker, or a predictor for the disease, not the disease itself, " says Robert Centor, a professor of internal medicine at the University of Alabama, Birmingham.

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Jungmin Lee, an economist at Sogang University in Seoul who has studied Olympic judging, suggests a fix beyond the scoring system: increasing the number of judges.

WSJ: Removing Judges' Bias Is Olympic-Size Challenge

During the introduction of most newly designed aircraft, typically "there are a certain number of things that get discovered early and are relatively easy to fix, " said Richard Healing, a former member of the NTSB.

WSJ: All Boeing Dreamliners Are Grounded

"With the significant number of holes identified on the same day, businesses will be racing against time to fix them all, " said Alan Bentley, senior vice president at security firm Lumension.

BBC: Two million US PCs recruited to botnets

Stocks with a significant number of settlement failures are put into a special category, and brokerage firms are supposed to fix those trades by closing out their positions within a certain amount of time.

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