Hadronization in cold nuclear matter

I review a recently proposed scaling analysis of hadron suppression in Deeply Inelastic Scattering on nuclear targets measured at the HERMES experiment. The analysis can distinguish 2 competing explanations for the observed suppression, namely, quark radiative energy loss with long hadron formation times, and prehadron nuclear absorption with hadronization starting inside the nucleus. Experimental data are shown to favor short formation times and prehadron absorption.