> (...) the apparent legitimacy is enhanced by the fact that I used a complicated computer program to make the fit. I understand this is the same process by which the top quark was discovered.
This is both hilarious and more common than you might think. In my field of expertise (ultrafast condensed matter physics), lots of noisy garbage was rationalized through "curve-fitting", without presenting the (I assume horrifyingly skewed) residuals, or any other goodness-of-fit test.