Richard,

Let us presume you find some asymmetry in the encoded data. Show me how you intend to prove that the asymmetry is not an artifact of the encoding procedure seeing as you are totally ignorant of that procedure (that is, the encoding procedure is undefined -- unknown - could be anything).

Say god puts you in a universe of his design and encodes the data by some wild algorithm. So you start with an entirely general model and perform experiments to solve his universe.

Having succeeded, God suggests a second try (unknown to you, it is the same universe) only this time he encodes the data by some entirely different algorithm. So again you start with your entirely general model. This time your results must be exactly the same as they were the first time.

If the results are different in any way, then you have failed the test!

Have fun -- Dick