Alderson's (2007) paper investigated whether subjective frequency counts for words might be a reliable substitute for corpus data. Alderson is critical of previous research which has found high correlations between corpus data and subjective estimates, and he argues that his own research, "has failed to show that frequency judgements can substitute for objective word frequency counts derived from corpora" (p. 407). In what follows, I question whether Alderson has really established his case, and also refer to some previously published research which has attempted to unravel the "mystery" of intuitions in this area.