Incoprea Research

Original Theories Volume XXXII · science index

54 retained entries from the original 89. Original entry numbers are preserved. These are working hypotheses, not findings or proofs.

Dissolution

• Theory 80 · Addiction Is a Relation
  Addiction is better described as a relation between behaviour and environment than as a property of a substance or a person.
• Theory 88 · Chronic Pain Is a Process
  Chronic pain is a maintained process rather than a persistent state, so questions about its presence misdescribe it.
• Theory 89 · Consciousness Is Not One Variable
  Consciousness is not a single quantity, so questions about its level in a system have no well-defined answer.
• Theory 81 · Invasive Is About Belonging
  'Invasive' encodes a judgement about belonging rather than a measurable property, so impact and origin are conflated.
• Theory 77 · Natural Has No Definition
  'Natural' has no operational definition that survives contact with measurement, so claims about naturalness are claims about a chosen benchmark.
• Theory 76 · There Is No Baseline
  Restoration targets a baseline state that did not exist as a stable configuration, so the question 'restore to what' has no factual answer.
• Theory 87 · Normal Is a Statistic
  Clinical 'normal' ranges are distributional artefacts, so falling outside them is not itself a disease.
• Theory 79 · Race Has No Genomic Referent
  Human genetic variation is clinal, so racial categories have no genomic referent even though they correlate with ancestry.
• Theory 83 · Resilience Conflates Two Things
  'Resilience' conflates resistance to disturbance with speed of recovery, two properties that trade against each other.
• Theory 75 · Species Is a Convenience
  Species is not a natural kind but a convention imposed on a continuum, so questions that presuppose sharp boundaries lack an answer.
• Theory 82 · Sustainability Has No Threshold
  Sustainability has no measurable threshold, so operational definitions reduce to chosen constraints rather than discoveries.
• Theory 86 · Wilderness Is Recent
  Wilderness describes landscapes shaped by recent depopulation rather than untouched nature, so protecting it preserves an artefact.

Refinement

• Theory 13 · Aerosol Cooling Is Smaller
  Aerosol cooling is smaller than mid-range estimates because absorption by black carbon offsets scattering by sulphate.
• Theory 07 · Ice Feedback Is Weaker
  Arctic albedo feedback is partly offset by increased cloud cover in autumn, making the net feedback smaller than clear-sky estimates.
• Theory 08 · b-Values Shift With Depth
  The earthquake magnitude-frequency b-value declines with depth, so deep and shallow sequences cannot share a statistic.
• Theory 18 · Competition Is Asymmetric
  Most competitive interactions are strongly asymmetric, so symmetric coefficients misrepresent coexistence.
• Theory 20 · Dietary Effects Are Smaller
  Dietary associations shrink when intake is measured by biomarkers rather than questionnaires, because self-report error is systematic.
• Theory 04 · The Peak Is Not the Equator
  Marine diversity peaks slightly poleward of the equator because the tropical maximum is split by a thermal plateau.
• Theory 09 · Drift Is Stronger Than Census
  Effective population size is far below census size because variance in reproductive success raises the rate of drift.
• Theory 02 · Heritability Depends on Variance
  Heritability is higher in uniform environments, because it is the share of variance, so eliminating environmental variance raises it.
• Theory 03 · Reaction Time Is Logarithmic
  Reaction time rises with the logarithm of the number of alternatives rather than linearly with the count.
• Theory 19 · Learning Rates Fall With Scale
  Observed learning rates for energy technologies fall once deployment scale is controlled, because early gains came from factory learning rather than cumulative output.
• Theory 05 · Exponents Shift With Temperature
  Metabolic scaling exponents move toward two-thirds once temperature is controlled, rather than the three-quarters often fitted.
• Theory 10 · Heat Uptake Lags
  Ocean heat uptake lags forcing by decades because mixing into the deep ocean is slower than models parameterise.
• Theory 01 · Aggregates Are Smaller
  Pooled effect estimates are smaller than the studies that dominate a literature, because quality-weighted pooling downweights small selective samples.
• Theory 12 · Residence Is Shorter
  Soil carbon residence times are shorter than radiocarbon models imply because old carbon is a small recalcitrant fraction rather than a slow bulk pool.
• Theory 06 · Area Exponents Are Lower
  Species-area exponents in fragmented landscapes are lower than the island value because the matrix provides partial habitat.
• Theory 17 · Infrastructure Exponents Are Lower
  Infrastructure scaling exponents are lower than the widely quoted 0.85 once small settlements are included, because rural networks are sparse.
• Theory 11 · Efficacy Wanes Faster
  Observed vaccine efficacy falls faster than trial estimates because trial follow-up is shorter than the waning timescale.

Inversion

• Theory 72 · Growth Promoters Breed Resistance
  Antibiotic use in livestock raises human resistance more than therapeutic use in some settings, because volumes and durations are larger.
• Theory 64 · Dams Displace More Than They Irrigate
  Large dams displace more productive land and people than the irrigation they enable, in some tropical settings.
• Theory 73 · Hard Defence Increases Erosion
  Seawalls increase erosion downdrift by removing the sediment source the beach would have supplied.
• Theory 74 · Firebreaks Can Spread Fire
  Firebreaks can increase spread by channelling wind and introducing dry fuel edges.
• Theory 65 · Protection Can Harm
  Protected areas can reduce biodiversity when they displace resource use into more fragile adjacent land.
• Theory 59 · Screening Can Harm
  Screening can produce net harm when overdiagnosis and false-positive cascades exceed the benefit of early treatment.

Reversal

• Theory 39 · Biofuels Can Increase Carbon
  Biofuel crops can increase net carbon when land conversion and fertiliser emissions exceed the fossil carbon displaced.
• Theory 28 · Antibiotics Can Reduce Resistance
  In some communities, antibiotic use reduces resistance by suppressing a resistant species that was competitively dominant.
• Theory 29 · Irrigation Can Drain
  Irrigation can lower regional water availability when evaporation losses exceed the recharge it induces.
• Theory 31 · Closures Can Raise Pressure
  Marine protected areas can increase total fishing pressure by displacing effort into unprotected grounds.
• Theory 40 · Recycling Can Raise Material Use
  Recycling can raise total material throughput by lowering the cost of virgin-equivalent material.
• Theory 30 · Reforestation Reduces Water
  Reforestation lowers streamflow because trees transpire more than the vegetation they replace.
• Theory 38 · Dams Can Emit
  Reservoirs in warm shallow settings can emit more greenhouse gas than the fossil generation they displace.
• Theory 27 · Suppression Increases Fire
  Long-term fire suppression raises eventual burn severity by accumulating fuel that would otherwise have burned in small events.
• Theory 22 · Warming Can Add Snow
  In some regions warming increases snowfall by raising atmospheric moisture faster than it raises the snowline.

Displacement

• Theory 47 · Detection Explains the Decline
  Some measured biodiversity declines reflect changing detection rather than changing abundance.
• Theory 52 · Drift Explains the Pattern
  Some patterns attributed to selection are produced by drift in structured populations.
• Theory 43 · Environment Masquerades as Gene
  Some heritable-looking syndromes are produced by environmental transmission between generations rather than by genes.
• Theory 51 · Interfaces Fail
  Most system failures occur at interfaces between components rather than within components.
• Theory 42 · The Network Is the Cause
  Outcomes attributed to node properties are often produced by network position, so improving nodes without changing topology fails.
• Theory 45 · Expectation Does the Work
  Part of many treatment effects is expectancy rather than the mechanism claimed.
• Theory 48 · Queueing Explains the Delay
  Service delays attributed to processing are mostly queueing, so capacity and variability matter more than speed.
• Theory 46 · Regression Does the Work
  Improvements following intervention at a peak are often regression to the mean rather than effect.
• Theory 57 · Timing Explains the Flood
  Flood damage often reflects the timing of rainfall relative to soil saturation rather than total rainfall.
• Theory 41 · Variance Does the Work
  The damage in many systems is driven by the variance of a driver rather than its mean, so trends in averages mislead.

Index narrowed to the focused science collection. Biological and ecological population dynamics, genetics, physiology and engineering are retained. Source numbering remains historical; no remaining hypothesis has been promoted to a finding.