The sweep
| # | Hypothesis | |
|---|---|---|
| A1 | Every substrate-referenced measurement has a dimensionless ratio analogous to I2's λ; that ratio, not the material, sets the reported spread. | test now |
| A2 | Methods whose reference is subtracted automatically will report smaller uncertainties than methods with an explicit reference, because the subtraction hides the reference's variance. | test now |
| A3 | An interleaved reference beats an edge reference only when the field has boundary structure; on smooth fields the ranking reverses. | note |
| A4 | The optimal reference placement is determined by the field's correlation length, not by its mean gradient. | test now |
| A5 | Any quoted "typical" value from a method with an unreported reference ratio is reproducible only within the method's own reference convention. | test now |
| A6 | Differential measurements cancel reference drift only when both arms see the same reference; otherwise the differential amplifies it. | test now |
| A7 | A sensor's stated resolution is unattainable when its reference is measured less often than its signal. | note |
| A8 | The I2-type bias has a sign change that is a property of the geometry, so it should be invariant to material — testable by re-scoring any published spot-size series. | test now |
| A9 | Calibration transfer between instruments fails predictably at the wavelength or concentration where the two instruments' references differ most. | test now |
| A10 | Reference-free methods exist for every class where the reference enters linearly; a search for them is a search for ratios that cancel. | note |
| A11 | Half of reported "instrument-to-instrument disagreement" is a reference-convention difference and disappears when both are re-expressed in one convention. | test now |
| A12 | A blank measured as a function of fill history reveals wall adsorption with a mass-transfer coefficient, as demonstrated for a cuvette. | test now |
| # | Hypothesis | |
|---|---|---|
| B1 | Reported sensor performance scales with free-coefficient count across a corpus of papers, not with the underlying physics. | test now |
| B2 | A model with exactly one free coefficient per claimed effect cannot produce a spurious effect; two can. | test now |
| B3 | The ratio of constrained to free fit error is a direct measure of how far a system is from the assumed mechanism. | test now |
| B4 | Cross-validation on random splits inflates apparent performance by an amount predictable from the number of free coefficients. | test now |
| B5 | Grouped validation reveals leakage that random validation hides, with the gap scaling as the within-group correlation. | test now |
| B6 | Any "optimised" design reported without its parameter count is unfalsifiable in practice. | note |
| B7 | A model that fits better after constraint is evidence against the constrained mechanism, and the size of the worsening measures the departure. | test now |
| B8 | Free coefficients are not equally dangerous: the one multiplying the presumed mechanism is the one that manufactures the result. | test now |
| B9 | Sensitivity to a coefficient's assumed value predicts replication failure better than the reported effect size. | note |
| B10 | Adding a physically motivated second parameter reduces the spread at fixed dimensionless number by a measurable factor, and that factor is a test of the second parameter's necessity. | test now |
| B11 | Model capacity effects explain why biomedical and physical sensor literatures have different replication rates. | note |
| B12 | A pre-registered "one coefficient" rule would remove a large fraction of published optimisations. | note |
| # | Hypothesis | |
|---|---|---|
| C1 | The difference of two sums of Langmuir terms has at most two zeros on P > 0, provided each side has a pressure-independent term. | test now |
| C2 | Three crossings require at least one non-Langmuir (Hill, p ≠ 1) term. | test now |
| C3 | A reversal in a system with no saturating channel is necessarily a parameter artefact. | test now |
| C4 | The number of crossings is bounded by the number of sign changes in the sequence of channel amplitudes, not by the number of channels. | test now |
| C5 | Saturating channels can produce at most one reversal per rank inversion between the two gases' channel strengths. | test now |
| C6 | Reported rectification in thermal and ionic diodes will show the same free-coefficient dependence as membranes. | note |
| C7 | The pressure at which a reversal occurs is set by the ratio of the two half-saturation constants, not by their absolute values. | test now |
| C8 | Any selectivity claim should be reported as a function of pressure; a single-pressure claim is a point on an unknown curve. | note |
| C9 | A membrane that reverses must have counter-diffusing mechanisms; reversal without counter-diffusion is impossible. | test now |
| C10 | Hysteresis in selectivity across pressure cycles is diagnostic of a mechanism change rather than a saturation. | note |
| # | Hypothesis | |
|---|---|---|
| D1 | Concentration polarisation reproduces most reported pressure-dependent selectivity without any new mechanism. | test now |
| D2 | The support layer dominates reported permeance at high pressure, so selectivity should collapse at a predictable pressure. | test now |
| D3 | Surface flow and Knudsen flow are distinguishable only in a pore-size window that can be stated in advance. | test now |
| D4 | Aging of a membrane shifts the reversal pressure without changing the selectivity curve's shape. | note |
| D5 | Mixed-gas selectivity cannot be predicted from pure-gas data when the adsorption isotherms compete. | note |
| D6 | Temperature and pressure sweeps are degenerate: a change in one mimics the other through the same Langmuir group. | test now |
| D7 | Any reported "upper bound" on membrane performance is a bound on a specific transport model, not on materials. | note |
| D8 | The permeability-selectivity trade-off line shifts, rather than rotates, when a new mechanism is added. | test now |
| D9 | Thickness-dependence of permeance is a cleaner test of surface flow than pressure-dependence. | note |
| D10 | A membrane's behaviour at low pressure is set by defects, not by the material, so low-pressure data cannot rank materials. | note |
| D11 | Water vapour and CO₂ compete for the same sites in hydrophilic membranes, so humid mixed-gas data will invert the dry ranking. | note |
| D12 | Knudsen selectivity is the only membrane prediction that requires no measurement, which makes it the correct null hypothesis for every claim. | test now |
| # | Hypothesis | |
|---|---|---|
| E1 | Any beam-width convention error enters as a factor of four in λ, so reanalysis can recover it from the reported spot size alone. | test now |
| E2 | Published in-plane conductivities of 2D materials will cluster at λ > 10, meaning most are substrate-limited. | test now |
| E3 | A single-spot measurement with unknown G is unidentifiable; a two-spot measurement is identifiable only if one spot is below λ = 1. | test now |
| E4 | The reported temperature coefficient of conductivity is less biased than the absolute value, because the bias largely cancels in a ratio. | test now |
| E5 | Suspended samples measure a different quantity, not a better one, and the two cannot be compared without the domain-size term. | test now |
| E6 | Interface conductance values extracted from fitting are systematically lower than those from independent measurement, by a factor set by λ. | test now |
| E7 | Beam-offset errors produce a bias that is odd in the offset, so a symmetric scan cancels the leading term. | test now |
| E8 | Steady-state and transient methods disagree by more than either uncertainty because they weight λ differently. | test now |
| E9 | The apparent thermal conductivity of a thin film is bounded above by the substrate's, for any film thinner than a computable length. | test now |
| E10 | Raman thermometry inherits the same λ dependence through its own laser spot, so it cannot validate the optical method independently. | test now |
| E11 | Reported thermal boundary conductance oscillations with interlayer thickness will not survive when the interface reflectance is measured rather than fitted. | note |
| E12 | Any claim of ballistic phonon transport requires a length scale shorter than the reported spot; most do not meet it. | test now |
| # | Hypothesis | |
|---|---|---|
| F1 | The dwell-limited range floor is an information limit on the illumination-weighted spectrum, not a physical bound. | test now |
| F2 | An extended target breaks the floor because it is always partly illuminated, and the break scales with angular extent over beamwidth. | test now |
| F3 | Beyond the illuminated bandwidth, additional chirp slightly worsens precision because it adds noise where illumination is weak. | test now |
| F4 | Phase-steered and wavelength-steered arrays differ only in their angular dispersion, so any claimed advantage is a statement about that dispersion. | test now |
| F5 | The number of resolvable spots equals the number of elements, independent of the steering method, once the aperture is fixed. | test now |
| F6 | Any optical ranging claim should report the RMS bandwidth of its actual illumination, not its source bandwidth. | test now |
| F7 | Speckle sets a precision floor independent of bandwidth, and dominates for rough targets above a computable roughness. | note |
| F8 | Chirp nonlinearity appears as a range-dependent bias that a two-target calibration can remove. | test now |
| F9 | Atmospheric dispersion causes a wavelength-steered beam to wander independently of its chirp, at a magnitude predictable from the dispersion slope. | note |
| F10 | Two closely spaced targets are resolvable exactly when their delay separation exceeds the inverse RMS bandwidth, regardless of envelope shape. | test now |
| # | Hypothesis | |
|---|---|---|
| G1 | A matched-time control is more diagnostic than a dose-response curve because common-mode gain cancels in the control. | note |
| G2 | Any sensor claim that reports only a limit of detection, and not a specificity control, is unfalsifiable. | note |
| G3 | Hysteresis is the largest unmodelled term in most thin-film sensors and should be reported before sensitivity. | note |
| G4 | A sensor's response time and its sensitivity trade off through the same diffusion length, so improving one must worsen the other predictably. | test now |
| G5 | Cross-sensitivity to humidity dominates most reported gas-sensor responses at ambient conditions. | note |
| G6 | The 6.5% gain-matching requirement in a differential sensor is a free-coefficient threshold, so it will vary with the fit's parameterisation. | test now |
| G7 | Reference-electrode drift sets the achievable precision of any electrochemical sensor, independent of the transducer's own noise. | note |
| G8 | An array of identical sensors gives no more information than one, unless the sensors differ in a parameter that is not the analyte's. | test now |
| G9 | Reported detection limits scale with the reported averaging time in a way that can be checked against the noise spectrum. | test now |
| G10 | Any sensor whose calibration curve bends is either saturating or nonlinear; the two are distinguishable by a dilution series. | test now |
| G11 | A sensor's "selectivity" is meaningless without the concentration ratio at which it was measured. | note |
| G12 | Time-temperature superposition failures in a sensor's drift can be separated from aging by a two-temperature hold. | note |
| # | Hypothesis | |
|---|---|---|
| H1 | A finite-cutoff potential cannot represent elastic energy outside its cutoff, which gives a candidate error law quadratic in dipole magnitude. | test now |
| H2 | Only the prefactor of that law is architecture-dependent; the exponents are not. | test now |
| H3 | Elastic dipole magnitude is collinear with defect volume, so any incremental predictive claim must survive a variance-inflation check. | test now |
| H4 | Defect error in machine-learned potentials is dominated by electronic rather than elastic effects, making the elastic argument second-order. | note |
| H5 | Grain-boundary complexion transitions are visible as discontinuities in a property measured against temperature at fixed composition. | note |
| H6 | Residual stress in a deposited film is thickness-independent above a computable thickness, and the constant identifies the mechanism. | note |
| H7 | Hydrogel negative results arise from constant-diffusion assumptions, so a variable-diffusivity model could reverse the conclusion. | test now |
| H8 | The reported gain of a perforated skin over an area-only control disappears when the control matches both area and perimeter. | test now |
| H9 | Any "universal" scaling exponent fitted across materials is an average of material-specific exponents and should be reported with its spread. | test now |
| H10 | Nanocrystalline strength plateaus below a grain size set by the dominant deformation mechanism, and the plateau is a crossover of two laws rather than a new law. | note |
| H11 | Crack-tip hydrogen concentration is measurable only if the measurement integrates over a volume smaller than the process zone. | note |
| H12 | Reported toughness values from indentation cracks are not measurements of a material property but of a residual-stress state. | test now |
| # | Hypothesis | |
|---|---|---|
| I1 | Upper limits are routinely converted into measurements in curated databases, and aggregates inherit the error. | test now |
| I2x | Corrections exist published but unlinked, so the record holds two values with equal authority for the same measurement. | test now |
| I3 | Many "independent" reference values descend from one measurement, walkable through the citation graph. | test now |
| I4 | Deposited datasets that no paper cites contain repeated measurements of the same sample. | test now |
| I5 | Published data can be stratified by the calibration state of the instrument that produced it, using facility logs. | note |
| I6 | Handbook constants that no one has re-measured show a round-number bias diagnostic of copying. | test now |
| I7 | A field's proposed-but-unexecuted experiments form a finite list, and some were later done under another name. | test now |
| I8 | Two literatures describe the same compound under names that never co-occur, doubling apparent evidence. | test now |
| I9 | A long-running numerical discrepancy is an artefact of unit definitions rather than of physics. | test now |
| I10 | Curated database values disagree with recomputation from their own deposited raw data at a measurable rate. | test now |
| I11 | Figures containing digitised curves can be reanalysed to recover data no longer available. | test now |
| I12 | Patent working examples contain experimental results absent from the journal literature. | test now |
| # | Hypothesis | |
|---|---|---|
| J1 | A claimed dimensionless law should report the spread at fixed group value; if the spread exceeds the effect, the law is a relabelling. | test now |
| J2 | The spread criterion predicts replication failure better than p-values or effect size. | note |
| J3 | Fitted exponents over narrow windows are poorly determined — tested and contradicted: sd 0.015 over half a decade. | closed |
| J4 | Reversal base rates rise with parameter range width — tested and contradicted: 22%, 23%, 13% over 1, 2, 4 decades. | closed |
| J5 | Model-free replication is possible for any claim whose effect is a ratio, because ratios can be checked without calibrating the instruments. | test now |
| J6 | A negative result is more informative than a positive one when the model has more than two free coefficients. | test now |
| J7 | Reviewers systematically under-weight the number of free coefficients relative to the reported effect size. | note |
| J8 | A claim's replication probability is predictable from its own methods section without reading the results. | note |
| J9 | Pre-registering the estimator choice removes more variance than pre-registering the hypothesis. | note |
| J10 | Every field has a characteristic "spread floor" set by its reference conventions, and comparing across fields is meaningless without it. | test now |
| J11 | The most cited number in a field is usually the one with the largest spread. | note |
| J12 | Simulation results that match their own assumptions are never independent validation, and the phrase "validated by simulation" should be treated as a category error. | test now |
| Section | Count | test now | note | closed |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| A Reference and instrument | 12 | 8 | 4 | 0 |
| B Free parameters | 12 | 6 | 6 | 0 |
| C Saturation and crossings | 10 | 6 | 4 | 0 |
| D Transport and membranes | 12 | 5 | 7 | 0 |
| E Thermal metrology | 12 | 10 | 2 | 0 |
| F Optical and ranging | 10 | 7 | 3 | 0 |
| G Sensors and calibration | 12 | 4 | 8 | 0 |
| H Materials and defects | 12 | 6 | 6 | 0 |
| I Data and provenance | 12 | 10 | 2 | 0 |
| J Method and meta-science | 12 | 5 | 5 | 2 |
| Total | 116 | 67 | 47 | 2 |
If one pattern holds across the sweep: the recurring failure is not a wrong number but a quantity whose definition silently contains the thing it is supposed to measure — a reference, a convention, a free coefficient, or an assumption about saturation.
Incoprea Research · batch 1 · 3 November 2026. Computational model results and one real-catalogue re-analysis. No new physical experiment was performed. No novelty claimed; no systematic literature search. Code, data and JSON accompany this page set.