Verdict tiers
The verdict surface comes in two shapes: the user-facing six-tier set used on public surfaces and in reader-oriented copy, and the full dossier set — the larger canonical vocabulary that lives in each signal’s dossier. Both are valid. The user-facing set is the simplification; the dossier set is the operational truth. This page is the citable record of the full dossier set and the mapping between the two. The Methodology Taxonomy defines the user-facing six-tier set and the rest of the canonical strings.
The user-facing six-tier set
Used on public surfaces, in essays, and in any reader-oriented copy. Lower-cased by design.
| # | Canonical string | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | consilience | Strongest verdict — clears all three layers and two or more independent research traditions converge on the mechanism |
| 2 | confirmed | Clears the statistical battery and at least six of nine Whewell criteria; primary citation tier |
| 3 | confirmed w/ caveats | Core finding holds with documented binding limitations |
| 4 | statistical | Passes the statistical battery; full three-layer review pending or under revision |
| 5 | suspended | Insufficient data for resolution; under continued monitoring |
| 6 | killed | Failed primary test or fatal confound identified; permanently retired |
The full dossier verdict set
Used in dossier verdict and verdict_canonical fields. This is the
operational truth; the six-tier set above is the presentation simplification.
| Dossier verdict | User-facing tier | Notes |
|---|---|---|
CONFIRMED | confirmed | Routing tier for the CONFIRMED family |
CONSILIENCE | consilience | Strongest — multi-tradition convergence |
CONFIRMED_WITH_CAVEATS | confirmed w/ caveats | Documented binding limitations |
CONFIRMED_WEAK | confirmed w/ caveats | Statistical association present, mechanism evidence thin; auto-stitch fires disclosure |
CONFIRMED_STATISTICAL | statistical | Battery passed; full review pending |
CONFIRMED_STRONG | confirmed | As CONFIRMED but explicit-strong tier |
CONFIRMED_STRUCTURAL | confirmed | Concentration-risk / supply-chain |
EMERGING | suspended | Early-stage candidate, full validation in progress |
SUGGESTIVE | suspended | Cross-domain hints, primary associative test below threshold |
CONTESTED | suspended | Mixed evidence across independent evaluations |
SUSPENDED | suspended | Insufficient data, monitoring continues |
UNSCORABLE | suspended | Validator still under development |
PREDICTION | suspended | Proposed hypothesis not yet empirically tested |
PROOF_OF_CONCEPT | suspended | Mechanism demonstrated in toy or lab context |
NULL | killed | Failed primary test |
NOISE | killed | Indistinguishable from structured noise |
KILLED | killed | Generic killed tag |
FALSIFIED | killed | Fatal confound identified |
INVERTED (DIRECTIONAL_INVERSION) | killed | Sign-flipped from stated hypothesis; killed for regime instability |
RETIRED | killed | Retired from active monitoring |
REDUNDANT | bookkeeping | Consolidated into a canonical sister signal; cite the sister |
DEFINITIONAL | foundational fact | SI second, general relativity, Turing morphogenesis — statistical batteries do not apply by design. See Definitional Anchors. |
Verdict tiers are not interchangeable
CONFIRMED_WEAK, CONFIRMED_WITH_CAVEATS, SUSPENDED, NULL, EMERGING,
CONSILIENCE, SUGGESTIVE, CONTESTED, and NOISE are not CONFIRMED. A
paper that treats them as equivalent fails the audit gate. When citing a signal
in a public artifact, the dossier verdict is the truth; the user-facing tier is
a presentation simplification.
See the Methodology Taxonomy for the dimensions, batteries, Whewell rubric, and failure-mode presentation strings.
Source of truth: the canonical taxonomy file in the Observatory repository; this page is its public rendering.