Cases

Each case maps one contested hypothesis: an overview you can read, a claim ladder you can audit, evidence with provenance, and the experiments that would settle it.

Hand-tinted engraving of a pale gold river winding through dense green forest canopy seen from above, faint circular and square enclosure lines showing through the foliage on both banks, and a small open handwritten chronicle with a quill resting on a rock ledge in the lower corner.

AMZ-001Amazonian archaeology · Ethnohistory · Historical demography

The Emptied Amazon

In 1542 Gaspar de Carvajal described a crowded, organized river world along the Amazon. Later centuries found forest and silence. Was he inventing, exaggerating — or describing a world that died between the visits?

Well supportedThe chronicle and its witnesses
Well supportedEarthworks and contact-era settlement
Well supportedEngineered food systems
UnresolvedPopulation totals

and 2 more on the case page

High research priority

AI assessment · ratified by 5 of 5 independent models · no human review

Hand-tinted engraving of a seated muse in a laurel wreath, a closed book on her knee, raising a small telescope toward an enormous disc of concentric cream rings with a single ember-red center, under a charcoal-slate night sky beside a globe on a tripod.

CCC-001Cosmology · CMB data analysis · Statistical methodology

The Aeon Before Ours

Do faint concentric circles and hot spots in the cosmic microwave background carry news from a universe before the Big Bang — or is that what any random sky looks like when you search it hard enough?

ContradictedThe concentric circles
ContradictedThe Hawking points
Well supportedWhat counts as chance
Weakly supportedThe theory's physics

and 2 more on the case page

Medium research priority

AI assessment · ratified by 5 of 5 independent models · no human review

A hand-tinted engraving of a bird above a quiet sea, with the shoreline opening into layers like the leaves of an old book.

DEEP-001Comparative iconography · Comparative mythology · Archaeology

Deep Memory

Distant places, familiar forms: how much of the resemblance between bird-men, handled objects, navel-of-the-world names, feathered serpents, civilising teachers and flood stories across distant ancient cultures belongs to a shared past, and how much to the ways people make images, tell stories and look for connections?

Weakly supportedHow common the broad motifs are
Weakly supportedThe civiliser lineup against retelling
Provisionally supportedHandled objects: shape known, use argued separately
Well supportedDates and intermediates

and 2 more on the case page

Medium research priority

AI assessment · contested by the panel · no human review

Hand-tinted engraving of a monumental polygonal megalithic wall of interlocking many-angled stones in ochre and raw sienna, beneath a pale grey-blue sky.

GEO-001Archaeology · Materials science

Cast, Not Carved

Were some megalithic monuments cast in place from processed mineral inputs rather than carved and transported?

ContradictedThe Great Pyramid's casing and backing blocks
Weakly supportedPumapunku andesite and sandstone
Provisionally supportedIngredients and feasibility
ContradictedThe pyramid salt

and 2 more on the case page

Medium research priority

AI assessment · contested by the panel · 1 of 23 featured claims human-reviewed

Hand-tinted engraving in verdigris tones of an open book lying in a meadow beneath a cloud that holds a diagram of linked nodes, while a pale sulfur-yellow butterfly flies free above.

MPI-001Parapsychology · Quantum foundations · Research methodology

Elusive by Law

Does the Model of Pragmatic Information correctly predict that mind–matter correlations must decline whenever an experiment tries to pin them down — or is the decline just what noise does?

Weakly supported

Medium research priority

AI assessment · ratified by 5 of 5 independent models · no human review

Hand-tinted engraving in muted violet-grey: a robed figure sleeps while an antique-gold shaft of light falls from a brain and a microtubule lattice above, with a faceted polyhedron and a stoppered flask nearby.

ORCH-001Neuroscience · Quantum biology · Anesthesiology · Foundations of physics

Collapse, Not Computation

Do conscious moments occur when quantum states orchestrated in neuronal microtubules reach a gravitational collapse threshold — and does anesthesia work by breaking them?

Well supportedCollective electronic and optical behaviour of microtubules
UnresolvedQuantum coherence lasting a conscious moment
Weakly supportedAnesthesia by breaking a microtubule quantum state
UnresolvedGravitational collapse as physics

and 2 more on the case page

High research priority

AI assessment · ratified by 3 of 4 independent models · no human review

Hand-tinted engraving of a two-handled ancient Greek cup on a stone ledge, its interior dark, with barley ears bearing dark hornlike sclerotia leaning beside it, a grapevine climbing one handle, a mint sprig at its foot, and two crossed unlit torches behind.

TIK-001Classical archaeology · Archaeochemistry · Early Christianity

The Religion with No Name

Did a psychedelic sacrament power the Eleusinian Mysteries — and did the earliest Christians inherit it as the original Eucharist?

EstablishedAncient ritual drug use
Well supportedMaking ergot drinkable with lye
MixedWhat the reconstructed drink would do
Weakly supportedErgot in the Eleusinian kykeon

and 2 more on the case page

High research priority

AI assessment · contested by the panel · no human review

$Hand-tinted engraving of an observer crouched at a brass refracting telescope under a deep Prussian-blue night sky, a pale globe on a pedestal beside him and one bright star flaring overhead.$

TRN-001Astronomy · Archival surveys

Before Sputnik

Do star-like transients on 1950s photographic sky-survey plates record real optical flashes from objects near Earth before the first satellite?

Well supportedThe marks are real features of the plates
Provisionally supportedThe flagship events sit on the original negative
UnresolvedSome mark was made by light through the telescope
MixedPopulation patterns: shadow, nuclear timing, hotspots

and 2 more on the case page

High research priority

AI assessment · contested by the panel · no human review

Hand-tinted anatomical-plate engraving in madder red and oxblood: a skeleton beside a tightly knotted vessel that connects by a slender tube to a brain, with two smooth-muscle spindles laid below.

VASO-001Musculoskeletal medicine · Autonomic physiology · Contemplative science

State, Not Scar

Are muscle knots maintained vascular-autonomic states — latched smooth muscle — rather than damaged tissue, and does vascular tension participate in the mind?

Provisionally supportedThe observation base: palpable points that differ from surrounding tissue
Provisionally supportedThe electrical nidus and its address
MixedThe latch, where shown and where needed
UnresolvedThe breath key and the seconds-scale release

and 2 more on the case page

High research priority

AI assessment · ratified by 5 of 5 independent models · no human review

Hand-tinted engraving of a sage-green plain holding a tusked animal skull, a stone mortar, and an upright fluted point, while a faded vermilion comet streaks down a buff sky above distant hills.

YDIH-001Quaternary geology · Impact physics · Paleoclimatology · Archaeology

Fire From the Sky

Did one or more cosmic impacts or airbursts ~12,800 years ago trigger the Younger Dryas cooling, drive the megafaunal extinctions, and disrupt the Clovis world?

Well supportedGreenland ice-core platinum anomaly
Weakly supportedImpact-diagnostic proxy assemblage
Weakly supportedImpact triggered the Younger Dryas cooling
ContradictedClovis termination / population collapse

High research priority

AI assessment · contested by the panel · no human review

Hand-tinted engraving in graphite greys on bare cream paper: a small cloaked figure seen from behind holds up a lantern with deep-lapis glass, and only inside its widening beam does a world exist — engraved mountains, stars, and a faint geometric lattice condensing out of blank paper.

ZW-001Quantum foundations · Algorithmic information theory · Philosophy of physics

Zero Worlds

Observer-first physics — Müller's algorithmic idealism, Hoffman's conscious agents, Wolfram's ruliad — says the external world is derived, not fundamental. Can any of these programs earn the quantum mechanics they promise to explain?

EstablishedQuantum reconstruction theorems (the proven half)
Well supportedMüller's emergence theorems (lawful world as output)
UnresolvedThe observer → quantum bridge
Presently untestableNo-world-underneath thesis

Medium research priority

AI assessment · ratified by 5 of 5 independent models · no human review