Collapse, Not Computation · evidence ledger

Evidence

All 70 evidence records in this case's ledger. Every record carries an explicit direction, keeps what the source states separate from what we infer, and links its source and the claims it bears on. Supporting and undermining evidence get the same structure and the same seriousness.

Supports23 Undermines12 Qualifies21 Context14

Supports

23 records · strongest first

Records that favor a rung of the featured hypothesis.

Supports· strongORCH-E015

A single GABA_A β3 point mutation abolishes intravenous anesthetic action in vivo

what the source states: The abstract reports that mice carrying the β3(N265M) point mutation, which renders GABA_A receptors containing the β3 subunit insensitive to etomidate and propofol, showed abolished immobilizing action of both drugs and a profound reduction in their hypnotic effect (duration of loss of righting reflex). The same mutation only slightly reduced the effects of the volatile anesthetics enflurane and halothane. The authors conclude that the volatile agents "act via a broader spectrum of molecular targets."
what we infer: The steelman anchor, and the reason the conventional account is assessed as well supported: this is target-level causal evidence of a kind no microtubule study in this case approaches — change one residue, lose the drug effect. Any serious treatment of Orch OR has to reckon with the fact that its main rival has this and it does not. The record is filed as supporting ORCH-C003 and undermining the strong anesthesia claim, but with an honest boundary: the result is about intravenous agents, and the authors' own conclusion about volatiles acting through a broader target spectrum is the specific opening through which a microtubule contribution to volatile anesthesia could still enter. Orch OR proponents are entitled to that opening; they are not entitled to ignore the rest.
limitations: Establishes the mechanism for etomidate and propofol; does not transfer to volatile agents, which are the agents most Orch OR experiments use.
Shows a target is necessary for these drugs' action, not that consciousness is exhausted by receptor pharmacology.
Cautionary precedent from the same literature: TREK-1 knockout anesthetic resistance was initially reported and later not reproduced, so genetic anesthetic-target findings are not automatically durable.

Jurd, Rachel (2003)AI-verified citationORCH-C003 ORCH-C002

Supports· strongORCH-E047

Majorana Demonstrator: no spontaneous collapse radiation in 37.5 kg-y of enriched germanium

what the source states: The collaboration reports that, although white-noise collapse models predict a 1/E X-ray signature, they find "no evidence of such radiation in the 19-100 keV range" in a 37.5 kg-y enriched-germanium exposure collected between 2015 and 2019, with a best-fit signal of 6.3 ± 398.8 counts.
what we infer: An independent underground collaboration reproduces the null in the same channel Gran Sasso searched, so ORCH-C031 no longer rests on a single experiment.
limitations: Constrains only the white-noise formulation; the authors state coloured-noise extensions with a cutoff near 10^11–10^12 Hz evade X-ray bounds.
The DP interpretation is a secondary re-expression of a CSL-oriented search.

I. J. Arnquist (2023)AI-verified citationORCH-C047

Supports· strongORCH-E049

A second underground null adds weight to the exclusion of the parameter-free DP model

what the source states: The collaboration closes by stating that it improved the lower limit on the Diósi–Penrose collapse model by almost an order of magnitude, "adding significance to the exclusion of the parameter-free version of the model".
what we infer: Direction here is toward the physics conjunct and toward the Gran Sasso finding's generalization: an independent group reaches the same verdict about the parameter-free version, so the squeeze on ORCH-C030 is no longer single-experiment.
limitations: Same radiation channel as SRC-DONADI-2021, so not an independent test of the mechanism, only of the measurement.
Does not address Penrose's characteristic-lifetime formulation, which predicts no radiation.
Second reader (claude-sonnet-5, 2026-09-11, run 2026-09-11-verify-orch-or-120610, verify-v6) found the passage bears in different directions on the claims the record named; this record carries "supports" toward ORCH-C031, the rest went to a record of its own at intake: The quoted conclusion is accurate and correctly located, and the record properly flags the shared radiation channel with the 2021 underground test as a non-independence issue. But labeling this as 'undermines' is backwards: a second, independent (mostly) underground null result tightening the DP bound and reinforcing exclusion of the parameter-free model actually supports ORCH-C031, which states exactly that outcome. For ORCH-C030, which concerns the general characteristic-lifetime collapse formulation rather than the parameter-free DP model specifically, the passage is only background context, not a direct bearing on that claim's truth.

I. J. Arnquist (2023)AI-verified citationORCH-C031

Supports· moderateORCH-E001

Electronic excitation diffuses ~6.6 nm in microtubules, beyond Förster prediction

what the source states: The abstract states: "By studying how the quencher concentration alters tryptophan autofluorescence lifetimes, we demonstrate that electronic energy can diffuse over 6.6 nm in microtubules"; that "this diffusion length is not sufficiently explained by accepted Förster resonance energy transfer models, even after accounting for the contribution of tryptophan-tyrosine interactions"; and concludes that "microtubules are, unexpectedly, effective light harvesters." Diffusion was observed to depend on polymerization state but not on protofilament number.
what we infer: This is the strongest single piece of experimental support for the biological half of Orch OR, and its limits are as important as its content. The measured length scale is roughly one tubulin dimer, and the quantity measured is an excitation diffusion length, not a coherence time — the paper's modeling explicitly includes an incoherent energy-migration comparison. Structure-dependence (polymerization matters, protofilament architecture does not) argues against artifact. Treated here as strong evidence that microtubules are electronically nontrivial (ORCH-C013) and as no evidence at all for the millisecond coherence ORCH-C010 requires.
limitations: Diffusion length is inferred from concentration-dependent quenching, not directly imaged.
Not replicated by an independent laboratory as of this import.
Purified in vitro microtubules, not neurons: no MAPs, no cytosolic crowding, no membrane environment.
Independence caveat: Hameroff, Penrose, Craddock, and Tuszyński are all co-authors, so this is a collaboration including the theory's authors rather than an outside test of it.

Kalra, Aarat P. (2023)AI-verified citationORCH-C020 ORCH-C013

Supports· moderateORCH-E002

Etomidate and isoflurane reduce microtubule exciton diffusion

what the source states: The abstract states: "We also demonstrate that the presence of the anesthetics etomidate and isoflurane reduce exciton diffusion." The concluding sentence is that these results "may have implications in various physiological processes, including in anesthetic action." The deep-research report gives the reduced diffusion lengths as approximately 5.6 nm (etomidate) and 5.8 nm (isoflurane) at 50 μM against the 6.6 nm baseline; those specific values are from the paper body, which this import did not read directly, and are recorded here as reported rather than as verified.
what we infer: A direct experimental link between clinical anesthetics and a measured microtubule physical property — the observation that makes the anesthesia arm of Orch OR worth testing rather than merely worth asserting. The effect is modest, roughly a 13% reduction if the reported values are right, and the concentration is at or above the clinical range. Crucially this establishes that anesthetics perturb microtubule photophysics (ORCH-C011) without establishing that the perturbation has anything to do with unconsciousness; the specificity control in the same paper (ORCH-E003) is what stops this from carrying more weight.
limitations: Two agents only; no potency series, no nonimmobilizer controls, no hydrophobic non-anesthetic controls.
Free aqueous concentration not established, so effective exposure is uncertain.
Specific reduced values not verified against the paper body by this import.
In vitro purified microtubules; no demonstrated relationship to any behavioral endpoint.

Kalra, Aarat P. (2023)AI-verified citationORCH-C020 ORCH-C011 ORCH-C002

Supports· moderateORCH-E004

Superradiant collective tryptophan states predicted and quantum-yield enhancement measured

what the source states: The abstract states that theoretical analysis "predicts the formation of strongly superradiant states due to collective interactions among organized arrangements of up to >10^5 Trp UV-excited transition dipoles in microtubule architectures, which leads to an enhancement of the fluorescence quantum yield (QY) that is confirmed by our experiments." It further reports that these states are "remarkably resilient to disorder" and persist "at room temperature," with the brightest states having radiative lifetimes of "hundreds of femtoseconds" and the darkest "tens of seconds."
what we infer: Partly independent corroboration that microtubules are optically collective, from a group outside the Hameroff–Penrose line — which matters for ORCH-C013. The "tens of seconds" figure is the one that travels in secondary discussion and it is routinely misread: it is the radiative lifetime of a modeled dark collective eigenstate, a measure of how weakly a state couples to the light field, not a decoherence time. A state can be radiatively dark for seconds and dephase in femtoseconds. On the quantity Orch OR actually needs, this paper is silent.
limitations: Predominantly theoretical; the experimental component is a bulk fluorescence quantum-yield measurement, which is an indirect witness of collective states.
Quantum yield can be raised by several mechanisms; the collective-state interpretation is model-dependent.
Superradiance is cooperative light–matter coupling, a different physical process from the state reduction Orch OR requires.
In vitro; no anesthetic manipulation and no neural preparation.

Babcock, Nathan S. (2024)AI-verified citationORCH-C021 ORCH-C013

Supports· moderateORCH-E009

β-tubulin identified as a direct anesthetic target with functional consequences in vivo

what the source states: The abstract reports that the general anesthetic 1-aminoanthracene photolabeled β-tubulin, identified by mass spectrometry, with binding localized near the colchicine site; that the compound inhibited microtubule polymerization in vitro; and that pretreatment of tadpoles with the microtubule stabilizers epothilone D and discodermolide increased the concentration of anesthetic required to produce immobilization. The authors conclude that microtubules are "on-pathway targets" for this class of anesthetic.
what we infer: The best causal molecular evidence in the case that tubulin can lie on an anesthetic pathway, and it is strengthened rather than weakened by its provenance: this comes from an established anesthesia-mechanisms laboratory with no Orch OR commitment, which found the result while asking a different question. Two limits on its reach. The anesthetic is a research compound rather than a clinical volatile, so generalization is not established. And the epothilone-D direction here — stabilization producing anesthetic *resistance* — is opposite to the chronic epothilone-D result in mice (ORCH-E013), which is one more reason the stabilizer literature does not cohere into a rule.
limitations: 1-aminoanthracene is a research anesthetic; results may not generalize to clinical volatile or intravenous agents.
Tadpole immobilization endpoint, which is an immobility rather than hypnosis measure.
Binding near the colchicine site implies ordinary pharmacological interaction; nothing quantum is measured or implied.
The authors' own conclusion is the modest 'on-pathway targets', not a mechanism claim.

Emerson, Daniel J. (2013)AI-verified citationORCH-C011 ORCH-C012

Supports· moderateORCH-E011

Epothilone B delays loss of righting reflex by 69 s in rats (d = 1.9)

what the source states: The abstract reports that rats given a low dose of epothilone B (0.75 mg/kg subcutaneous) three hours before exposure to 4% isoflurane "took an average of 69 s longer to become unconscious as measured by latency to LORR," a statistically significant difference with Cohen's d = 1.9, described in the paper as a "large" normalized effect size. The authors state the delay "cannot be explained by tolerance to isoflurane," having tested for it, and note the result is "consistent with the hypothesis that anesthetic binding to MTs is a critical step in the mechanism of isoflurane-induced LORR."
what we infer: The cleanest behavioral result on the proponent side: blinded, with a tolerance control, and a large standardized effect. What it does not do is discriminate between explanations — no quantum variable was measured, and epothilone B changes microtubule stability, axonal transport, metabolism, and cellular integrity all at once, each of which offers a conventional route to altered anesthetic latency. The abstract's closing framing about "a quantum physical state of neural MTs" is the authors' interpretive gloss and is not a result of the experiment.
limitations: N = 8 in the main analysis; male rats only.
Not a counterbalanced crossover — every animal received the drug phase after the pre-drug phase.
Latency at a single high isoflurane concentration (4%), not a full concentration–response curve.
No microtubule quantum variable measured; drug effects on transport and metabolism are uncontrolled alternatives.
LORR is a behavioral proxy, and anesthetic endpoints fractionate.

Khan, Sana (2024)AI-verified citationORCH-C023 ORCH-C012 ORCH-C002

Supports· moderateORCH-E014

Nuclear-spin-bearing xenon isotopes are markedly weaker anesthetics at identical polarizability

what the source states: The abstract reports that in 80 randomized mice, "for xenon alone, the loss of righting reflex ED50 values of Xe, Xe, Xe, and Xe were 70 ± 4%, 72 ± 5%, 99 ± 5%, and 105 ± 7%, respectively," with the two higher values corresponding to the nuclear-spin-bearing isotopes xenon-129 and xenon-131 and the two lower to spin-zero xenon-132 and xenon-134. It states that all "four isotopes had a same exact polarizability of 3.60 Å," and concludes that nuclear spin attenuates anesthetic potency. Because of xenon's low potency the primary comparisons were made against a 0.50% isoflurane background.
what we infer: A genuinely hard result to explain in a pharmacology containing no quantum degrees of freedom: the isotopes are chemically identical and their calculated polarizability is identical, so the standard lipid-solubility and polarizability accounts predict no difference, and a 40–50% potency gap appeared anyway. Its relevance to this case is bounded, though, and the bound is severe: nuclear spin implicates *some* spin-sensitive molecular process and says nothing about where. Radical-pair mechanisms are a well-established alternative class elsewhere in biology. This supports "quantum effects participate somewhere in anesthesia" and not "microtubules are the site."
limitations: Single study; no independent replication identified.
Primary comparisons required a 0.50% isoflurane background, so the isotope effect is not measured on xenon alone in the main assay.
Molecular substrate of the spin effect is unidentified; microtubules are not implicated in any way.
LORR behavioral endpoint only.

Li, Na (2018)AI-verified citationORCH-C025 ORCH-C002

Supports· moderateORCH-E020

Consciousness-dependent zero-quantum-coherence signals in living human brains

what the source states: The authors report using a zero-quantum-coherence MRI protocol, derived from proposals for witnessing quantum gravity, in which detected signals should not arise from classical sources. They observed heartbeat-evoked potential-like signals in living human brains that did not correlate with any conventional MRI contrast, and which changed in relation to conscious awareness — subjects reported the signal disappearing as they fell asleep. The abstract concludes: "Our findings suggest that we may have witnessed entanglement mediated by consciousness-related brain functions. Those brain functions must then operate non-classically, which would mean that consciousness is non-classical."
what we infer: The single most consequential result in this case if it survives — direct evidence of non-classical function in a living brain would be a landmark independent of Orch OR. Two things restrain the weight given here. It is contested on methodological grounds by a leading NMR authority (ORCH-E021) and has not been independently replicated. And its scope is narrower than proponent summaries suggest: the experiment does not implicate microtubules at all, the mediator is unidentified, and the known quantum systems in the measurement are proton spins of bulk water. A fully validated result would establish non-classical brain function while leaving every microtubule claim untouched.
limitations: Entanglement-witness interpretation disputed in the same journal; no independent replication.
Mediating system unidentified; microtubules not implicated by the experiment.
Small sample; consciousness manipulation was naturalistic sleep onset rather than a controlled intervention.
The authors' own wording is heavily hedged ('suggest that we may have witnessed'), and secondary summaries frequently drop the hedge.

Kerskens, Christian Matthias (2022)AI-verified citationORCH-C026

Supports· moderateORCH-E044

Radical-pair spin dynamics modelled as a modulator of microtubule polymerization

what the source states: The authors insert magnetic-field and hyperfine effects into a two-rate kinetic model of tubulin polymerization, stating that "this rate is influenced by a RP reaction", and report that "Our model reproduces the experimental findings of Ref. 40 fairly well" — the reported disorder of tubulin assembly under a hypomagnetic field.
what we infer: My inference: this supplies a mechanistic rival to the 'general cellular disruption' reading of the same-direction stabilizer/destabilizer anomaly, and unlike that reading it carries field- and isotope-dependent predictions that can be tested.
limitations: Free parameters (recombination and relaxation rates) are chosen to reproduce the target ratio; the experiment being fitted reported no uncertainty, as the authors note.
Same authors as SRC-SMITH-2021; not independent.
No anesthesia endpoint is measured or modelled here.

Hadi Zadeh-Haghighi (2022)AI-verified citationORCH-C044

Supports· moderateORCH-E051

A semiclassical construction reproduces Penrose's rate exactly and fixes the constant at 1/2

what the source states: Diósi reports that the least-decoherence semiclassical construction he developed with Tilloy — continuous hidden measurement of the mass distribution, fed back as a classical Newton potential — "confirms the heuristic proposal and makes the constant unique", with the superposition decaying at exactly the conjectured rate "with the unique prefactor const. = 1 / 2".
what we infer: My inference: this narrows the sharpest form of the escape at ORCH-E019. At least one dynamical realization lands on Penrose's own rate, so 'the tested model was never Penrose's' becomes a claim about which dynamics, not about whether any dynamics reproduces the relation. Whether that particular dynamics is itself already excluded by the bounded channels is the open question.
limitations: Secondary description of Tilloy & Diósi, Phys. Rev. D 96, 104045, which was not retrieved in this pass.
Whether this construction predicts radiation or momentum diffusion at levels the Gran Sasso, Majorana and LISA Pathfinder bounds reach is not stated.

Lajos Diósi (2022)AI-verified citationORCH-C066 ORCH-C067 ORCH-C068

Supports· moderateORCH-E052

Penrose and Diósi agree on the lifetime and disagree on the dynamics

what the source states: Closing the article, Diósi writes that both agree the cat should collapse after a time of order ħ/E_Δ, but "We disagree on how this happens, smoothly, suddenly, or some other way", and names gravity-related collapse dynamics conserving energy and momentum as the hard remaining task.
what we infer: The rate conjecture and its dynamics are separable, and only the latter has been experimentally bounded so far — which is exactly why the physics rung is unresolved rather than refuted, and why 'less specified than the model that was tested' understates what is actually missing.
limitations: A statement of position, not a proof that no such dynamics exists.

Lajos Diósi (2022)AI-verified citationORCH-C069

Supports· moderateORCH-E056

Cross-lab: polymerization raises tubulin quantum yield at 280 nm in porcine tubulin

what the source states: Measuring porcine tubulin dimers against taxol-stabilized microtubules in UV-transparent microplates, the authors report that "polymerization enhances microtubule quantum yield at 280 nm" and that "the polymerization percent change is positive for both bounds" of the absorbance treatment, with the difference statistically significant on both branches.
what we infer: The direction of the quantum-yield trend now has partial cross-lab support in a different preparation, which firms up the collective-optics observation rung — as condensed-matter physics of an ordered aromatic lattice, which is what the adopted assessment already says.
limitations: Preprint; steady-state microplate geometry.
Shares the Craddock modelling lineage with the superradiance literature it tests, so independence is partial.
280 nm excitation is not tryptophan-selective.
Second reader (claude-sonnet-5, 2026-09-11, run 2026-09-11-verify-orch-or-120610, verify-v6) found the passage bears in different directions on the claims the record named; this record carries "supports" toward ORCH-C021, the rest went to a record of its own at intake: The quotes are accurate and correctly located, and the paper does report a robust 280 nm polymerization-induced QY increase consistent with the superradiance model's small predicted enhancement, so it supports ORCH-C021. However, the paper explicitly cautions (in 'Local photophysics versus cooperative emission') that such steady-state polymerization increases can arise from conventional, non-collective photophysical mechanisms, so this single observation does not itself establish nontrivial collective electrodynamics distinct from a passive-scaffold account; it is at best contextual for ORCH-C013, not supporting evidence. The record's blanket 'supports' direction for both claims therefore overstates what the passage establishes for C013.

Lea Gassab (2026)AI-verified citationORCH-C021

Supports· moderateORCH-E087

The zero-quantum-coherence authors' quantitative reply: classical iZQC cannot produce signals of the observed size — part 2

what the source states: For the authors' own sequence parameters at TE = 5 ms, "the maximum signal could reach 0.4% of the initial magnetization".
what we infer: This completes the ORCH-C026 exchange, which the ledger held as comment-without-reply. It is the authors' own defence and a recalculation rather than a new measurement, so it does not resolve whether an unrecognized classical mechanism in living tissue could produce the signal — which the authors themselves name as the interesting open question.
limitations: Authors' own reply; not independent adjudication.
The classical bound relies on models derived for chemical solutions, as the authors acknowledge.
Does not establish entanglement, only that the signals exceed the modelled classical bound.

Christian Kerskens (2023)AI-verified citationORCH-C026

Supports· moderateORCH-E088

The zero-quantum-coherence authors' quantitative reply: classical iZQC cannot produce signals of the observed size — part 3

what the source states: If relaxation is included, the classical bound falls further: "the reduction will be down to 0.13%, which is the best-case scenario without any saturation".
what we infer: This completes the ORCH-C026 exchange, which the ledger held as comment-without-reply. It is the authors' own defence and a recalculation rather than a new measurement, so it does not resolve whether an unrecognized classical mechanism in living tissue could produce the signal — which the authors themselves name as the interesting open question.
limitations: Authors' own reply; not independent adjudication.
The classical bound relies on models derived for chemical solutions, as the authors acknowledge.
Does not establish entanglement, only that the signals exceed the modelled classical bound.

Christian Kerskens (2023)AI-verified citationORCH-C026

Supports· moderateORCH-E089

The zero-quantum-coherence authors' quantitative reply: classical iZQC cannot produce signals of the observed size — part 5

what the source states: From these recomputed bounds the authors conclude: "It is now clear that we have not measured iZQC".
what we infer: This completes the ORCH-C026 exchange, which the ledger held as comment-without-reply. It is the authors' own defence and a recalculation rather than a new measurement, so it does not resolve whether an unrecognized classical mechanism in living tissue could produce the signal — which the authors themselves name as the interesting open question.
limitations: Authors' own reply; not independent adjudication.
The classical bound relies on models derived for chemical solutions, as the authors acknowledge.
Does not establish entanglement, only that the signals exceed the modelled classical bound.

Christian Kerskens (2023)AI-verified citationORCH-C026

Supports· moderateORCH-E090

The zero-quantum-coherence authors' quantitative reply: classical iZQC cannot produce signals of the observed size — part 7

what the source states: The correlation distance predicted for ZQC "played no role" when the gradient moments were varied "from 32.5 ms mT m −1 to around 80 ms mT m −1".
what we infer: This completes the ORCH-C026 exchange, which the ledger held as comment-without-reply. It is the authors' own defence and a recalculation rather than a new measurement, so it does not resolve whether an unrecognized classical mechanism in living tissue could produce the signal — which the authors themselves name as the interesting open question.
limitations: Authors' own reply; not independent adjudication.
The classical bound relies on models derived for chemical solutions, as the authors acknowledge.
Does not establish entanglement, only that the signals exceed the modelled classical bound.

Christian Kerskens (2023)AI-verified citationORCH-C026

Supports· weakORCH-E005

Scale-free 'triplet of triplet' resonances reported across tubulin, microtubule, and neuron

what the source states: The abstract reports "a self-similar triplet of triplet resonance frequency pattern for the four-4 nm-wide tubulin protein, for the 25-nm- wide microtubule nanowire and 1-μm-wide axon initial segment of a neuron," and describes the finding as suggesting a scale-free organizational principle spanning those levels.
what we infer: Offered by proponents as the scale-bridging mechanism Orch OR needs to get from molecular events to whole-brain conscious moments, which would make it important if it held up. Two things hold it back and they compound rather than merely add: electromagnetic resonance is a classical observable — self-similar frequency ratios across scales are not an entanglement witness and would not become one if replicated — and no independent laboratory has reproduced the measurements in the years since. The related Sahu 2013 work is the same group and is not independent corroboration. Graded weak on both counts.
limitations: No independent protocol-level replication identified; single laboratory lineage.
Resonance structure is a classical electromagnetic observable, not a quantum coherence or entanglement measure.
Bespoke measurement apparatus spanning an unusually wide frequency range; sensitive to setup artifacts.
Published in a considerably lower-profile venue than the primer's misattribution to Scientific Reports implies.

Saxena, Komal (2020)AI-verified citationORCH-C022 ORCH-C013

Supports· weakORCH-E010

Computational prediction that anesthetic effects on tubulin terahertz modes track clinical potency

what the source states: The abstract describes the methods as binding-site prediction, molecular docking, quantum chemistry, and theoretical modeling, and reports that modeled anesthetic action on collective terahertz dipole oscillations in tubulin correlates with clinical anesthetic potency.
what we infer: Frequently cited in proponent summaries as if it were experimental support for the anesthesia arm; it is not, and the distinction matters enough to record explicitly. This is a modeling study, so it cannot confirm anything — but it does something else of real value: it states the potency-correlation prediction in advance, which means a future experimental potency series would be a genuine prospective test rather than a post-hoc fit. Graded weak as evidence and flagged as high value as a prespecified hypothesis.
limitations: Entirely computational; no experimental measurement of the predicted correlation.
Proponent authorship (Hameroff, Tuszynski, Craddock, Kurian).
Docking and quantum-chemical modeling of anesthetic binding carries substantial known uncertainty.
No experiment has yet tested the prediction prospectively.

Craddock, Travis J. A. (2017)AI-verified citationORCH-C011

Supports· weakORCH-E012

Same effect in mice (+29 s, d = 0.8) — same laboratory, not independent

what the source states: The abstract reports that a single 8 mg/kg subcutaneous dose of epothilone B delayed isoflurane-induced LORR in mice by 29 seconds in a within-subject comparison, with Cohen's d = 0.8, and that the effect decayed over subsequent days. The abstract states the effect "is not large compared to the variability among different animals" and cites the contradictory independent finding of Li et al. 2025.
what we infer: A cross-species extension that reproduces the direction of the rat result, which is worth something — but it is a within-program replication with a shared senior author, not the independent confirmation that would matter, and the effect is smaller in both absolute and standardized terms. Graded weak for that reason. The authors deserve explicit credit for citing the contradictory independent study in their own abstract rather than omitting it; that is the behavior of a research program engaging with disconfirmation.
limitations: Same senior author and research program as ORCH-E011; a replication of direction within one laboratory, not independent confirmation.
Smaller effect than the rat study and acknowledged by the authors as modest against inter-animal variability.
Effect decayed on subsequent days, which the paper reports but does not explain.
No quantum variable measured; same wholesale-perturbation confounds as the rat study.

Huang, Yixiang (2026)AI-verified citationORCH-C023 ORCH-C012

Supports· weakORCH-E024

Gemini Deep Think: officially graded IMO gold, in natural language

what the source states: DeepMind reports that an advanced version of Gemini with Deep Think solved five of six problems at the 2025 International Mathematical Olympiad for 35 of 42 points, achieving gold-medal standard. The announcement states the solutions were graded and certified by IMO coordinators using the same criteria applied to student contestants, and that the system worked end-to-end in natural language within the 4.5-hour competition limit — without the Lean formalization used in 2024. The page attributes a confirming statement to IMO President Gregor Dolinar.
what we infer: Included for two specific facts the Nature paper predates: official IMO grading under contest conditions, and natural-language rather than formalized operation. Graded weak as a source because it is a corporate blog post with no accompanying paper and an unreleased model, so it rests on DeepMind's account — though the load-bearing element, external grading by IMO coordinators, is the part least susceptible to self-report bias. Same scoping as the rest of this theme: motivation rung only.
limitations: Corporate announcement; no peer-reviewed paper and no released model.
Solutions in natural language were not machine-verified, unlike the 2024 Lean work.
Competition mathematics, not open research problems.
Bears on the motivation rung only.

Google DeepMind (2025)AI-verified citationORCH-C041

Supports· weakORCH-E038

Study re-analysis: a spin step describes the four published means far better than a linear mass trend

what the source states: On the xenon-alone endpoint, weighted least squares with a spin indicator alone yields a weighted R-squared of 0.98 and a coefficient of +30.2 per cent atmosphere; mass alone yields 0.62 and -7.58. The structural reason requires no regression: within the spin-bearing pair, two mass units change ED50 by -6 per cent atmosphere; within the spin-zero pair, two mass units change it by +2; across the spin boundary, one mass unit (131 to 132) changes it by 29. The directly measured isoflurane-combined endpoint gives the same picture (spin coefficient +6.95, weighted R-squared 0.97).
what we infer: A smooth monotone confound in mass — diffusion scaling as the inverse root of mass, or solubility — cannot produce a step of that shape, so the specific alternative the agenda proposal raised is not well supported by the numbers it pointed at. This is graded weak deliberately: it describes four group means from a single unreplicated experiment, the frozen rule forbids treating it as an inferential result, and it speaks only to ordering, not to any quantum mechanism.
limitations: Descriptive only. The frozen identification rule tripped, so no p-value from this comparison is reported as evidential.
The non-monotonicity of the point estimates is within the reported dispersions and is not itself evidence against a mass effect; the load-bearing observation is the magnitude asymmetry.

This site (AI-authored project work held in the repository) (2026)AI-verified citationORCH-C025

Undermines

12 records · strongest first

Records that count against a rung — shown with the same structure and seriousness.

Undermines· strongORCH-E013

Independent laboratory: chronic epothilone D and vinblastine both INCREASE isoflurane sensitivity

what the source states: The abstract reports that "compared with saline treatment, epothilone D and vinblastine induced a leftward (more sensitive) shift of LORR response curves (95% confidence intervals for EC50: epothilone D, 0.75[0.73, 0.77] vs. saline, 0.97[0.96, 0.98]; vinblastine, 0.74[0.73, 0.75] vs. saline, 0.98[0.97, 0.99])," while paclitaxel produced a small rightward shift (1.05[1.03, 1.06] vs. saline 0.98[0.97, 0.99]) and the opioid control morphine produced a larger rightward shift (1.16[1.15, 1.17]). Mice received the microtubule-modulating drugs for more than two weeks. The study was randomized and blinded.
what we infer: The most methodologically complete animal study in the case, and it runs against the theory in the form the theory is usually stated. Two features make it more informative than a single contrary data point. First, it measured full concentration–response curves rather than latency at one concentration, which is the better-specified quantity. Second, it included a destabilizer — and vinblastine shifted sensitivity in the same direction as the stabilizer epothilone D, which no account based on microtubule stability predicts, and which suggests the operative variable may be general cellular disruption. This does not refute the acute epothilone-B result (different compound, different regimen), but it does refute the generalization that stabilizing microtubules protects consciousness from anesthetics.
limitations: Chronic dosing (>2 weeks) versus the single acute injection of the Wellesley studies; chronic modulation invites compensatory remodeling.
Epothilone D rather than epothilone B — and Emerson et al. found epothilone D producing resistance in tadpoles, so the compound's direction is not consistent across preparations either.
Authors acknowledge saline was an imperfect vehicle control for poorly soluble compounds.
LORR rather than MAC; isoflurane only; outbred CD1 mice.
Epothilone D altered blood pH and CO₂, offering a physiological confound.

Li, Na (2025)AI-verified citationORCH-C024 ORCH-C012 ORCH-C002

Undermines· strongORCH-E017

Gran Sasso null result excludes the parameter-free Diósi–Penrose model

what the source states: The abstract reports a dedicated search for the spontaneous radiation predicted by gravity-related dynamical collapse, performed with an ultra-low-background germanium detector at the Gran Sasso underground laboratory, and states: "Our result sets a lower bound on the effective size of the mass density of nuclei, which is about three orders of magnitude larger than previous bounds. This rules out the natural parameter-free version of the Diósi–Penrose model."
what we infer: Methodologically the strongest experiment anywhere in this case, conducted with the model's own co-originator among the authors, and it came out negative. It substantially damages the physics conjunct ORCH-C001 requires. The scope of the exclusion is precisely stated in the authors' own words and should not be inflated: it kills the natural parameter-free stochastic completion, not every conceivable gravity- related collapse theory, and specifically not Penrose's original heuristic ℏ/E_G criterion, which makes no radiation prediction. That qualification is real (see ORCH-E019) and is also exactly the kind of escape that costs a theory its testability.
limitations: Tests a specific stochastic master equation; the map from Penrose's geometric argument to that equation is not unique.
Constrains a parameter range rather than closing the question — non-Markovian and non-local variants evading the radiation prediction have been proposed.
Does not test the ℏ/E_G lifetime scaling itself, which remains unmeasured.

Donadi, Sandro (2021)AI-verified citationORCH-C031 ORCH-C030

Undermines· moderateORCH-E003

Picrotoxin, a convulsant, produced a comparable effect on the same assay

what the source states: The deep-research report states that the same study found picrotoxin — a GABA_A antagonist and convulsant, pharmacologically the opposite of an anesthetic — reducing tryptophan quenching comparably to the anesthetics tested. This detail is from the paper body rather than the abstract and was not directly verified by this import; it is recorded because it is the single most important qualification on ORCH-E002 and omitting it would misrepresent the experiment.
what we infer: If a convulsant and two anesthetics all suppress the assay, then what is being measured is the perturbability of microtubule photophysics by small hydrophobic molecules, not something specific to anesthesia. This is the sharpest available objection to the anesthesia arm and it comes from inside the theory's own flagship experiment rather than from critics — which is to the authors' credit for reporting it. It does not show the anesthetic effect is spurious; it shows the experiment as performed cannot distinguish an anesthesia-specific mechanism from general pharmacological perturbation. Only a potency series with proper controls can.
limitations: Detail not directly verified against the paper by this import; carried as reported by the deep-research report.
A single comparison compound, not a systematic specificity panel — the absence of specificity is not itself established, only unaddressed.

Kalra, Aarat P. (2023)AI-verified citationORCH-C011 ORCH-C002

Undermines· moderateORCH-E007

Tegmark: microtubule decoherence 10⁻¹³–10⁻²⁰ s, far too fast for neural relevance

what the source states: The abstract reports calculated decoherence timescales for superposed neural states — specifically "for superpositions of neuron firing (coherent or not)" and "for either separated coherent states of a single tubulin or for two tubulins in the same state" — in the range 10⁻¹³ to 10⁻²⁰ seconds, against dynamical timescales of neural processes of 10⁻³ to 10⁻¹ seconds. The conclusion drawn is that "the degrees of freedom of the human brain that relate to cognitive processes should be thought of as a classical rather than quantum system."
what we infer: For twenty-five years this has been the reason most neuroscientists considered the question closed, and the gap it reports — ten to seventeen orders of magnitude — is large enough that no amount of refinement at the margins would close it. Its evidential status should be stated plainly though: it is a calculation about a modeled state, not a measurement of a microtubule, and its force depends entirely on whether the state it modeled is the state the theory proposes. That is precisely what the Hagan reply contests, which is why this is graded moderate rather than strong.
limitations: A theoretical calculation, not a measurement; no microtubule was observed.
Models specific superposed states whose correspondence to the Orch OR proposal is disputed by Hagan et al. 2002.
Predates the ordered-lattice and collective-state work of 2023–2024, which changes some of the assumed environment.
Assumes environmental coupling parameters that the proponent reply argues are inappropriate for ordered biological structures.

Tegmark, Max (2000)AI-verified citationORCH-C010 ORCH-C001

Undermines· moderateORCH-E018

The Gran Sasso experimenters apply their own bound to Orch OR: 'highly implausible'

what the source states: The abstract states that the authors analyze Orch OR against the spontaneous-radiation bounds from the Gran Sasso measurements and conclude that Orch OR, "when based on the simplest version of gravity-related dynamical collapse, is highly implausible in all the cases analyzed."
what we infer: Weighty because of who wrote it: the experimenters themselves, plus Diósi, applying their own result to the theory rather than leaving the inference to others — the people best placed to know what their bound excludes. The conditional in their own sentence carries the whole argument, though, and they wrote it deliberately: "when based on the simplest version." What is excluded is a class of implementations, and the theory's ability to survive by not being one of them is both a legitimate defense and a symptom of underspecification.
limitations: Conclusion is explicitly conditional on 'the simplest version of gravity-related dynamical collapse'.
An analysis paper applying an existing bound rather than a new measurement.
Contested by McQueen 2023 on the question of whether Penrose OR is committed to the version tested.

Derakhshani, Maaneli (2022)AI-verified citationORCH-C001 ORCH-C030

Undermines· moderateORCH-E021

Warren: the MRI data provide no evidence for entanglement

what the source states: Warren's comment argues that the Kerskens–López Pérez paper "provides no evidence to justify this claim" of witnessed entanglement, and that the observations show only "what we already knew: the brain (and any other living tissue) is complex, multicompartmental, and imprecisely characterized by MRI." In a reply published in the same issue, Kerskens and López Pérez maintain that their observations cannot be explained by the classical intermolecular multiple-quantum-coherence mechanism Warren invokes.
what we infer: A substantive methodological objection from someone with standing to make it, published in the appropriate venue — this is how a technical dispute should look. The general point is well taken: NMR signals in heterogeneous living tissue are precisely the regime in which classical multi-compartment effects can imitate exotic ones, and entanglement witnesses require ruling those out affirmatively rather than by elimination. The authors' reply is not obviously wrong either, and this import has no basis for adjudicating a technical NMR dispute. Recorded as genuinely unresolved, which is why ORCH-C026 carries reviewState `disputed`.
limitations: A comment, not an independent replication attempt — the decisive experiment has not been run.
Authors replied specifically to the mechanism Warren proposed; the exchange is unresolved on the public record.
This project has no independent basis for adjudicating the technical NMR question.

Warren, Warren S. (2023)AI-verified citationORCH-C026

Undermines· moderateORCH-E022

An AI model disproved a 1946 Erdős conjecture, confirmed by an independent mathematician

what the source states: Sawin's abstract states that sets of n points exist in the plane containing more than n^1.014 pairs at unit distance, and that this "improves on very recent work of a team at OpenAI, who proved the same result with an inexplicit exponent greater than 1, drastically improving on the best previous lower bound and disproving a conjecture of Erdős." Per Sawin's paper, the OpenAI work was carried out by Lijie Chen using an internal model, with Mark Sellke and Mehtaab Sawhney verifying correctness.
what we infer: This is the load-bearing verification for the whole AI-mathematics line, and it is deliberately anchored on Sawin rather than on OpenAI's announcement: an independent working mathematician states the result in his own paper and builds on the construction, so the fact does not rest on a company's word about its own unreleased model. As evidence it is filed against ORCH-C040 because it is the strongest available instance of a machine producing genuinely new research-level mathematics. Its force is bounded by the scoping recorded on ORCH-C041: it bears on the motivation rung only, and the Penrose-side response (ORCH-E025) contests whether a novel result inside an existing framework touches the argument at all.
limitations: Preprint, not journal-published at import.
Attribution of the original result depends on Sawin's characterization plus Quanta reporting; the OpenAI announcement page itself timed out on two direct fetch attempts and was not read by this import.
The model is internal and unreleased, so the process that produced the result cannot be independently examined.
Bears on the Gödelian motivation only — no bearing whatever on microtubule, anesthesia, or collapse claims.

Sawin, Will (2026)AI-verified citationORCH-C041 ORCH-C040

Undermines· moderateORCH-E023

AlphaProof: Lean-verified silver-medal IMO performance, peer-reviewed in Nature

what the source states: The abstract reports that AlphaProof, a reinforcement-learning system operating on formal mathematics in Lean, solved three of the five non-geometry problems at the 2024 International Mathematical Olympiad, including the competition's hardest problem (P6), and that combined with AlphaGeometry 2 the system achieved a score equivalent to a silver medal — reported by DeepMind as 28 of 42 points, one point below the gold threshold. Solutions were formally verified in Lean. Some problems required multi-day computation rather than the contest time limit.
what we infer: The most rigorously verified item in this evidence line: Lean machine-checking means the mathematical correctness is not a matter of opinion, and Nature peer review covers the methodology. As a challenge to Penrose the relevant limitation is conceptual rather than methodological, and it is substantial — competition problems are known to be solvable within an existing framework by construction, which is exactly the category the Penrose-side response says was never in dispute. Filed as undermining because the accumulation of formerly-human-only mathematical performance is what the critics' argument rests on, and graded moderate because that argument is contested at ORCH-E025.
limitations: IMO problems have known solutions within existing frameworks; not framework extension.
Multi-day computation rather than contest conditions for some problems.
Corporate-authored research about the authors' own system, though Lean verification substantially offsets this.
Bears on the motivation rung only.

Hubert, Thomas (2025)AI-verified citationORCH-C041 ORCH-C040

Undermines· moderateORCH-E036

Study: no unconditional proponent decoherence estimate meets the theory's own requirement

what the source states: With both sides' numbers in one table: required, 25 ms for the gamma-synchrony exemplar (or 10^-7 to 10^-4 s per event under the 2014 beat-frequency re-scoping); critics' estimates, 10^-13 s (Tegmark, on a soliton model both sides agree was not Orch OR) and 10 fs to 30 ps for anything coupled to electronic motion (Reimers et al.); the proponents' own unconditional recalculation, 10^-5 to 10^-4 s — two to three orders short of their exemplar. The only proponent routes to physiological timescales are the explicitly conditional actin-gel estimate (10^-2 to 10^-1 s) and a coherence-time inference from unreplicated single-laboratory resonance measurements.
what we infer: On the corpus's own published numbers, the coherence-time requirement of ORCH-C010 is not met by any unconditional proponent-side estimate; the gap is bridged only by assumptions or by an inference from measurements that ORCH-R005 records as unreplicated for over a decade. This does not show the requirement cannot be met — it shows that whether it is met is precisely what ORCH-R001's measurement would decide, and that the theory's own literature has not closed the gap on paper.
limitations: A tabulation of published estimates, not a new measurement; disputed model differences (Tegmark's rendering of Orch OR) are recorded as stated by each side, not adjudicated.

Aletheia editorial AI (Kimi K3, Cursor cloud agent) (2026)AI-verified citationORCH-C010

Undermines· moderateORCH-E039

Study search: the xenon isotope result has never been replicated, extended, or preceded

what the source states: The frozen protocol's eight literal queries were run against PubMed and Europe PMC; the full forward citation list of Li et al. 2018 was screened (37 citing works) along with its full backward reference list (24 references); and arXiv, bioRxiv and other Europe PMC preprints, OSF, and two registries were swept. No replication, no extension with additional isotope arms, and no pre-2018 isotope-resolved xenon potency report was located. Every citing work that engages the result is a review, an editorial, or a theoretical radical-pair paper. The commentary pre-committed as a known candidate is identified as Hameroff SR, 'Anesthetic Action and Quantum Consciousness: A Match Made in Olive Oil', Anesthesiology 2018, and excluded from rows as secondary restatement.
what we infer: A result cited across the quantum-consciousness literature for eight years rests on one four-arm experiment in one laboratory that no one has repeated. The citation count measures interest, not corroboration, and the ledger should carry the distinction explicitly.
limitations: Google Scholar, Semantic Scholar and ProQuest were named in the frozen protocol but not queried as written; the forward-citation screen rests on Europe PMC's list, a recorded protocol deviation.
Absence of a located replication is not proof that none exists.

This site (AI-authored project work held in the repository) (2026)AI-verified citationORCH-C025

Undermines· moderateORCH-E040

Study extraction: the dataset's dispersions are of unstated type and its headline values are calculated, not measured

what the source states: The accessible record states neither whether the reported plus-or-minus values are standard deviations or standard errors, nor any isotopic enrichment percentage, purity profile, oxygen fraction, equilibration time, blinding statement, or temperature control. The xenon-alone ED50 values that carry the headline (70, 72, 99, 105 per cent atmosphere) are calculated by the authors from co-administration with 0.50 per cent isoflurane; the directly measured endpoint is the isoflurane-combined one (15, 16, 22, 23). Separately, the PubMed rendering of the abstract strips the isotope superscripts, and its group order invites mapping the values to 129 then 131 when the publisher deposit gives 131 then 129.
what we infer: Two things follow. The result is less auditable than its citation record implies: a reader cannot recover from the public abstract whether the error bars are SD or SEM, which is the difference between overlapping and non-overlapping arms. And any secondary re-analysis built on the PubMed rendering will silently swap the two spin-bearing isotopes — harmless for a binary spin term, corrupting for any mass-resolved or spin-quantum-number analysis.
limitations: The full text is paywalled and not in PubMed Central; some of these fields may well be stated there. The study records them as unavailable to this collection, not as absent from the paper.

This site (AI-authored project work held in the repository) (2026)AI-verified citationORCH-C025

Undermines· weakORCH-E016

Quantum chemists: the revised Orch OR proposal is not scientifically justified

what the source states: A three-page commentary in Physics of Life Reviews, published alongside the Hameroff–Penrose 2014 review, titled "The revised Penrose–Hameroff orchestrated objective-reduction proposal for human consciousness is not scientifically justified." Crossref holds no abstract for this comment and this import did not read the full text, so its specific arguments are not characterized here beyond what the title states.
what we infer: Recorded for completeness as the principal published skeptical response to the current version of the theory, and graded weak deliberately — partly because it is a short commentary rather than an experimental result, and partly because this import could not read its argument. An unread critique should not carry weight merely because its title is emphatic. Hameroff and Penrose replied in the same issue, and a reader following this thread should read both rather than either.
limitations: Full text not read by this import; argument characterized only at the level the title supports.
A commentary, not new data.
Answered directly by the authors in the same issue; the exchange is not resolved on the public record.

Reimers, Jeffrey R. (2014)AI-verified citationORCH-C001

Qualifies

21 records · strongest first

Records that narrow, complicate, or bound what another record can carry.

Qualifies· moderateORCH-E008

Hagan, Hameroff & Tuszyński: revised estimate 10⁻⁵–10⁻⁴ s — still short of requirement

what the source states: The abstract states that the authors "critically examine the assumptions made in [Tegmark's] model and re-examine the decoherence times for superposed states of microtubule tubulins," and that "correction of Tegmark's assumptions yields decoherence times of 10⁻⁵ to 10⁻⁴ seconds" — up to seven to eight orders of magnitude longer than Tegmark's figures. The paper enumerates several specific objections, the most consequential being that Tegmark modeled a soliton in superposition along the microtubule rather than the superposed protein conformations of the Orch OR proposal.
what we infer: The central objection lands: the two papers computed decoherence for different physical states, so the seven-to-eight-order-of-magnitude gap between them is partly an artifact of modeling different things. That is a genuine correction and it is why "the brain is warm and wet, therefore no" is an inadequate argument. But this record is filed as `qualifies` rather than `supports` because even the proponents' own revised number does not reach their requirement: 10⁻⁵–10⁻⁴ s is one to two orders of magnitude short of the ~25 ms conscious moment the theory needs. Two calculations disagreeing by orders of magnitude, neither anchored to a measurement, is the actual state of this rung — and it is why ORCH-C010 is assessed as unresolved rather than refuted.
limitations: Also a calculation, not a measurement.
Authored by two of the theory's principals; not an independent reanalysis.
Even the favorable estimate falls one to two orders of magnitude short of the theory's own requirement.
The competing estimates have never been adjudicated by experiment, which is the only thing that would settle them.

Hagan, S. (2002)AI-verified citationORCH-C010

Qualifies· moderateORCH-E025

A DeepMind researcher argues the systems deduce but cannot abduct

what the source states: The position paper argues that generative AI "has mastered Induction... and is rapidly conquering Deduction" but "lacks the mechanism for Abduction." Its stated claim is that an LLM "could plausibly execute the deductive phase of proving theorems from established premises" while being "structurally incapable of the abductive 'Jump' required to formulate those premises."
what we infer: The most interesting item in this theme, because of where it comes from: the author co-authored AlphaProof and the AlphaZero work, so this is a concession about the location of the gap made from inside the laboratory doing the closing — not a defensive move by Penrose's supporters. It supplies the critics' own strongest counterargument, and it maps almost exactly onto the framework/result distinction that Penrose's defenders press. Filed as `qualifies` rather than `supports` because it is an argument in a position-paper track, not a measurement: it changes how the AI results should be read without adding or removing any fact.
limitations: A position paper — explicitly argumentative, so classified by its own venue as a viewpoint rather than a finding.
One researcher's framework; the induction/deduction/abduction taxonomy is a philosophical choice, not an empirical result.
Makes a structural claim about current architectures, not a claim about physical non-computability — it does not vindicate Penrose's argument, only complicates its refutation.

Zahavy, Tom (2026)AI-verified citationORCH-C041 ORCH-C040

Qualifies· moderateORCH-E030

Jurd/Zeller β3(N265M) line: propofol's immobility and hypnosis endpoints separate

what the source states: In the same β3(N265M) knock-in line used by Jurd et al. 2003, the endpoints of intravenous anesthesia dissociate: suppression of noxious-evoked movement (immobility) is abolished in the mutants, while loss-of-righting-reflex duration — the standard rodent surrogate for hypnosis — is profoundly reduced but not abolished.
what we infer: Sharpens what the receptor-level evidence in this case does and does not establish. The β3 mutation's cleanest, most complete effect is on immobility, a spinal endpoint; its effect on the consciousness-adjacent endpoint is real but partial. That distinction supports keeping the narrow claim (ORCH-C003) separate from the exhaustive one (ORCH-C004), and it means "change one amino acid and the drug stops working" is strictly true of immobility and only partly true of hypnosis.
limitations: Loss of righting reflex is a coarse surrogate for consciousness; a reduced-but-present hypnotic response does not establish where the residual effect acts.
Bibliographic details incomplete (see source verificationNote); the finding is corroborated across independent descriptions but the exact journal/volume is unconfirmed.

Zeller, A. (2007)AI-verified citationORCH-C003 ORCH-C004

Qualifies· moderateORCH-E031

Eger et al. 2008: no single channel, and no combination, sufficient for immobility

what the source states: "A paradox arises from present information concerning the mechanism(s) by which inhaled anesthetics produce immobility... two decades of focused investigation have not identified a ligand- or voltage-gated channel that alone is sufficient to mediate immobility. Opioid, 5-HT3, GABA-A and glutamate receptors, and potassium and calcium channels appear to be irrelevant or play only minor roles. Furthermore, no combination of actions on ligand- or voltage-gated channels seems sufficient."
what we infer: The paper's own framing is a paradox in need of a new paradigm, and its scope is immobility from inhaled agents — a spinal endpoint — not consciousness and not intravenous agents. Both readings that circulate are therefore partly wrong: it does not vindicate any alternative target (it names none, microtubules included), and it does not leave the classical account complete either, since its authors report that no known channel or combination suffices for the endpoint they studied. That unresolved residue is precisely why the exhaustive classical claim (ORCH-C004) is graded unresolved rather than supported.
limitations: Concerns immobility from inhaled agents; carries no direct implication for propofol-induced unconsciousness.
A 2008 review — later work on specific targets postdates it.

Eger, E. I. 2nd (2008)AI-verified citationORCH-C004

Qualifies· moderateORCH-E035

Study: the specification exists, is arithmetically consistent, and changed carriers under critique

what the source states: The tabulated corpus commits to consistent numbers across two decades — 500 ms with ~10^9 tubulins (1996), 25 ms with 2 x 10^10 (1998, 2014), the same tau x N arithmetic throughout, independently reproduced by Derakhshani et al. 2022 — but the physical carrier moved: the 1996 conformational-qubit mechanism (0.2 nm displacement) was retired in the 2014 revision, which concedes the energetics critique and keeps only femtometer-scale nuclear separation carried by collective dipoles. The corpus nowhere commits to a coherence length, an entanglement structure, a prospective potency-correlation coefficient, or a pass/fail threshold for any direct coherence measurement.
what we infer: The theory is quantitatively specified in its parameter values but not in its acceptance criteria — the precise defect ORCH-R008 asked about. Any future coherence measurement (ORCH-R001) or potency series (ORCH-R002/R009) still needs a proponent-endorsed threshold fixed in advance, or its result will be absorbable either way. Note also that the two formulations are not one theory for evidential purposes: results against the 1996 conformational mechanism no longer bear on the 2014 dipole mechanism.
limitations: Proponent rows are one authorial lineage; their consistency is internal, not corroborative (study limitations 2).
Corpus-bounded census under frozen criteria; later solo publications outside the frozen candidates are not tabulated.

Aletheia editorial AI (Kimi K3, Cursor cloud agent) (2026)AI-verified citationORCH-C001 ORCH-C010

Qualifies· moderateORCH-E037

Study re-analysis: the xenon isotope dataset fails its own pre-set identification test, but not for the reason expected

what the source states: Weighted least squares on the four published isotope arms, under criteria frozen before any number was read, gives a variance inflation factor of 3.25 — below the pre-set failure threshold of 5 — so spin-versus-mass collinearity (r = -0.832) is real but not disabling. The scaled design-matrix condition number is 302.4 against a pre-set threshold of 30, which trips the frozen identification-failure rule. The source of that ill-conditioning is intercept-versus-mass rather than spin-versus-mass: atomic mass spans five units around 131.5, under 4 per cent relative variation, leaving the mass coefficient at -0.43 with a standard error of 1.92 and the intercept with a standard error of 254. Per the pre-registration, no spin p-value is reported as evidential.
what we infer: The confound the agenda proposal worried about is not the one that bites. Li et al. did place two isotopes on each side of the spin boundary, which is more design than the proposal credited them with, and that is why spin and mass are not fatally collinear. What defeats the regression is that the mass range is far too narrow for a linear mass term to be distinguished from a constant. ORCH-C025 should be read as resting on a dataset that cannot support a two-covariate inferential test either way, rather than as a claim refuted by one.
limitations: The freeze set a condition-number threshold without naming a scaling convention; the study applied the stricter uncentred convention, and records that the centred convention (4.89) would not have tripped the rule.

This site (AI-authored project work held in the repository) (2026)AI-verified citationORCH-C025

Qualifies· moderateORCH-E046

LISA Pathfinder bounds the Diósi–Penrose cutoff above any nuclear size — through a channel radiation arguments do not reach

what the source states: Attributing LISA Pathfinder's measured relative acceleration noise between two free-falling test masses to collapse-induced force noise, the authors bound the Diósi–Penrose regularization scale to at least 40.1 ± 0.5 fm, "which is larger than the size of any nucleus", and conclude "we rule out the DP model if the cut-off" is the size of a fundamental particle.
what we infer: My inference: this constrains mechanical momentum diffusion, not photon emission, so the escape recorded at ORCH-E019 — that Penrose's criterion makes no radiation prediction — does not reach it. Escaping the bounds now requires denying that the collapse injects any energy or momentum into matter at all.
limitations: Bound is derived by attributing all residual acceleration noise to collapse; Brownian thermal noise dominates and its value is not precisely known, so the bound is conservative rather than a measurement of collapse.
Applies to the regularized DP model with a point-mass cutoff, which Penrose's own formulation handles differently (see SRC-DIOSI-2022).
Direction set to "qualifies" (from "undermines") by the second reader (claude-sonnet-5, 2026-09-11, run 2026-09-11-verify-orch-or-120610, verify-v6) at intake: The source's DP bound only rules out the model conditionally, if the regularization cutoff is taken to be nucleon-sized; ORCH-C030 states the general collapse formula τ≈ℏ/E_G without committing to that specific cutoff choice, so the finding constrains/qualifies the parameter space of DP-type models rather than straightforwardly undermining the claim as stated. The quotes are accurate and in context, the locators are correct, and the finding is relevant to the DP-flavored collapse claim.

Bassam Helou (2017)AI-verified citationORCH-C030

Qualifies· moderateORCH-E071

The co-originator: the rate carries an unspecified constant and may not be parameter-free — part 1

what the source states: The spatial superposition |x1〉 + |x2〉 collapses at rate 1/τ = E_Δ/ħ, where τ is the mean lifetime and E_Δ is the difference between gravitational self-energies before and after the collapse, "respectively, times an unspecified numeric constant".
what we infer: My inference: the edition's 'untested vague theory' framing can be made precise and less rhetorical. The missing object is not a number but a dynamics; and the regularization scale that the LISA Pathfinder and underground bounds constrain may be unavoidable rather than an artefact of the tested surrogate.
limitations: Reflective article by one of two originators; his reading of Penrose's route around the divergence is his own.
No new calculation or experiment.

Lajos Diósi (2022)AI-verified citationORCH-C030

Qualifies· moderateORCH-E072

2026 modelling reports entanglement measures but its lifetimes are radiative, not dephasing, times — part 3

what the source states: The radiative lifetimes are stated to be defined within the Markovian model: "the lifetimes reported here are defined within the Markovian radiative-loss model" used throughout the paper.
what we infer: My inference: the field has moved to entanglement-flavoured observables without moving to a physiological environment — no solvent, ionic or vibrational bath and no 310 K dephasing estimate. So the class of work that most resembles the witness ORCH-R001 asks for still does not supply the number, and the absence recorded at ORCH-C010 is untouched.
limitations: Preprint; computational only.
Single-excitation manifold, radiative loss only; no non-radiative or thermal channels.

Lea Gassab (2026)AI-verified citationORCH-C010

Qualifies· moderateORCH-E073

2026 modelling reports entanglement measures but its lifetimes are radiative, not dephasing, times — part 4

what the source states: The physical decay rates come from the imaginary part of the effective generator's eigenvalues, which "corresponds to a memoryless (time-independent) coupling to the electromagnetic bath" and yields exponential decay envelopes for each collective mode.
what we infer: My inference: the field has moved to entanglement-flavoured observables without moving to a physiological environment — no solvent, ionic or vibrational bath and no 310 K dephasing estimate. So the class of work that most resembles the witness ORCH-R001 asks for still does not supply the number, and the absence recorded at ORCH-C010 is untouched.
limitations: Preprint; computational only.
Single-excitation manifold, radiative loss only; no non-radiative or thermal channels.

Lea Gassab (2026)AI-verified citationORCH-C010

Qualifies· moderateORCH-E075

The magnitude of the polymerization effect spans nearly an order of magnitude on the scattering correction — part 1

what the source states: At 280 nm excitation in the no-Trp condition, the polymerization percent change is positive for both bounds, "ranging from approximately + 6.1 % +6.1\% using Q Y raw" to approximately +46.8% using the scattering-corrected branch (QY_bgA).
what we infer: My inference: the observable is not yet metrologically stable. Running an anesthetic potency series against it (ORCH-R002, ORCH-R009) before the scattering correction is closed risks measuring the correction rather than the physics.
limitations: The bounds arise from an analysis choice, not from replicate scatter.
Preprint.

Lea Gassab (2026)AI-verified citationORCH-C021

Qualifies· moderateORCH-E076

At tryptophan-selective excitation the polymerization effect reverses sign between treatments — part 1

what the source states: At 295 nm excitation in the no-Trp condition, the two polymerization percent-change bounds differ substantially and reverse sign: "the two bounds differ substantially and reverse sign".
what we infer: My inference: 295 nm is where excitation is most selective for tryptophan and therefore where comparison with a tryptophan-only excitonic model is most meaningful — and it is exactly there that the measurement cannot yet fix a sign. This is a metrological, not a biological, obstacle, and it is fixable.
limitations: A single dataset in one geometry.
Preprint.

Lea Gassab (2026)AI-verified citationORCH-C021

Qualifies· moderateORCH-E077

At tryptophan-selective excitation the polymerization effect reverses sign between treatments — part 2

what the source states: The uncorrected absorbance branch gives an apparent polymerization decrease at 295 nm, "an apparent decrease of about" −58.6% using QY_raw.
what we infer: My inference: 295 nm is where excitation is most selective for tryptophan and therefore where comparison with a tryptophan-only excitonic model is most meaningful — and it is exactly there that the measurement cannot yet fix a sign. This is a metrological, not a biological, obstacle, and it is fixable.
limitations: A single dataset in one geometry.
Preprint.

Lea Gassab (2026)AI-verified citationORCH-C021

Qualifies· moderateORCH-E078

At tryptophan-selective excitation the polymerization effect reverses sign between treatments — part 3

what the source states: The background-corrected absorbance branch gives an apparent polymerization increase at 295 nm, "an apparent increase of about" +12.7% using QY_bgA.
what we infer: My inference: 295 nm is where excitation is most selective for tryptophan and therefore where comparison with a tryptophan-only excitonic model is most meaningful — and it is exactly there that the measurement cannot yet fix a sign. This is a metrological, not a biological, obstacle, and it is fixable.
limitations: A single dataset in one geometry.
Preprint.

Lea Gassab (2026)AI-verified citationORCH-C021

Qualifies· moderateORCH-E079

At tryptophan-selective excitation the polymerization effect reverses sign between treatments — part 4

what the source states: Because the sign reverses across plausible absorbance treatments, no single effect size is assigned at 295 nm; "the polymerization comparison remains bounded in this dataset".
what we infer: My inference: 295 nm is where excitation is most selective for tryptophan and therefore where comparison with a tryptophan-only excitonic model is most meaningful — and it is exactly there that the measurement cannot yet fix a sign. This is a metrological, not a biological, obstacle, and it is fixable.
limitations: A single dataset in one geometry.
Preprint.

Lea Gassab (2026)AI-verified citationORCH-C021

Qualifies· weakORCH-E019

McQueen: the radiation bound does not reach Penrose's own criterion

what the source states: A short comment in Physics of Life Reviews titled "Have underground radiation measurements refuted the Orch OR theory?", replying to Derakhshani et al. 2022. Crossref holds no abstract and this import did not read the full text; per the deep-research report, the argument is that Penrose's OR criterion is a characteristic-lifetime relation (τ ≈ ℏ/E_G) rather than a stochastic dynamical model, and therefore does not entail the spontaneous radiation the Gran Sasso experiment searched for. That characterization is relayed rather than verified.
what we infer: The argument is sound as far as it goes and this case accepts it, which is why ORCH-C030 is assessed as unresolved rather than refuted. It is graded weak for two reasons. Its content is relayed from a secondary summary rather than read. And a distinction that saves a theory from an experiment by locating it outside the experiment's reach is not evidence for the theory — it converts a refuted specific model into an untested vague one, which is a worse epistemic position than it sounds.
limitations: Full text not read by this import; argument relayed from the deep-research report's summary.
A short comment, not new data or new theory.
Its force is entirely negative: it blocks an inference without supporting the theory.

McQueen, Kelvin J. (2023)AI-verified citationORCH-C030 ORCH-C031

Qualifies· weakORCH-E026

The editor's own audit: Penrose's testable examples have mostly settled against him

what the source states: The essay surveys the concrete examples Penrose offered as marks of non-computable understanding and concludes that those which were testable have mostly settled against him — most cleanly the pawn-fortress chess position released by the Penrose Institute in 2017, which modern engines handle correctly, and now the Erdős unit-distance conjecture. It argues that the examples aging best are the least testable ones. Against that, it advances the distinction it calls "the escalator, not the steps": the claim was never that any particular insight is permanently non-computable, but that the open-ended capacity to keep generating new frameworks is — so each formalized insight becoming computable in hindsight is what the view predicts rather than evidence against it.
what we infer: Included as an honestly-labeled editorial source rather than as evidence of fact: it is the case editor's own essay, and its value is that it states the Penrose-side response in its strongest form while conceding the empirical scoreboard. The concession is what makes it usable — an advocacy piece that reports its own side losing the testable cases is more informative than one that does not. The essay is also the only verifiable record available to this import of the critic's wording: the linked X post returned HTTP 403 to unauthenticated fetch and was never read, so the tweet is not cited as a source anywhere in this case. Graded weak because it is argument and curation, not research.
limitations: The case editor's own essay — not independent of this case's editorial judgment.
Philosophical argument and curation rather than original research; substantially composed of quoted AI-model outputs, which the essay labels as such.
The 'escalator, not the steps' distinction is precisely the move that critics call unfalsifiable; the essay presents it without resolving that objection.
The social-media claim that prompted this line was never directly readable and is not cited.

Jhong, Eugene (2026)Verified — held in project libraryORCH-C040 ORCH-C041

Qualifies· weakORCH-E027

The AI-mathematics evidence line has a documented false-positive history

what the source states: Quanta's reporting documents that an earlier round of AI Erdős-problem claims in October 2025 collapsed when the purported solutions were found already to exist in the literature, and that a widely-publicized claim about Erdős Problem 333 was withdrawn within hours after a user of Thomas Bloom's problem site identified a 1977 resolution by Erdős himself. Subsequent claimed solutions have been checked against prior work before announcement.
what we infer: Recorded so this evidence line carries its own error history rather than only its successes — the same standard applied to the microtubule results. The pattern is specific and worth naming: the recurring failure mode is inadequate literature search rather than incorrect mathematics, which is a claim about novelty rather than about capability. It does not touch the unit-distance result, which was verified by named mathematicians and independently improved upon. It does mean claims in this area should be checked against the literature before being counted, which is why this case anchors on Sawin's paper rather than on announcements.
limitations: Secondary journalism, not a primary source.
Does not bear on the verified unit-distance result, which survived independent checking.
Filed under the OpenAI announcement record for locality; the retracted claims involved several systems and venues, not only OpenAI.

OpenAI (2026)AI-verified citationORCH-C041

Qualifies· weakORCH-E029

The claim of independent confirmation does not hold

what the source states: The primer states that Hameroff's two 2020 predictions — that anesthetics would be found to act on microtubule quantum states, and that microtubule quantum effects would be detected — "have been confirmed by multiple independent laboratories (Princeton, UCF, NIMS Japan, and Wellesley)."
what we infer: Recorded because the case's own backbone article makes a claim the verification run could not sustain, and inheriting it silently would corrupt the ledger. The four institutions did produce relevant results, but they do not constitute independent confirmation of the anesthesia prediction specifically: the Princeton experiment lists Hameroff and Penrose as co-authors; the two Wellesley epothilone-B studies share a senior author and research program with each other; the NIMS resonance work is unreplicated and measures a classical observable; and the one genuinely independent stabilizer study, from Massachusetts General, found the effect running the opposite direction. "Multiple laboratories have produced results consistent with the prediction" would be defensible. "Confirmed by multiple independent laboratories" is not.
limitations: The case editor's own essay; not independent of this case's editorial judgment.
Self-described as assembled 'with the help of various chatbots', which plausibly explains the citation errors found elsewhere in it.
This record scores a characterization, not an experiment — it adds no new empirical fact, only a correction to how existing facts were summarized.

Jhong, Eugene (2026)Verified — held in project libraryORCH-C023 ORCH-C012 ORCH-C002

Qualifies· weakORCH-E032

Linganna 2015: taxane-treated surgical patients show altered hemodynamic response — not a measured dose difference

what the source states: A retrospective study of surgery for nonmetastatic breast cancer compared patients who had received neoadjuvant taxane chemotherapy — which hyperstabilizes microtubules — against those who had not, using hemodynamic change in response to incision as a surrogate for anesthetic depth. Taxane-treated patients showed a greater blood-pressure change on incision.
what we infer: Filed with a correction attached, because the paraphrase that circulates ("patients on microtubule stabilizers required more anesthetic") overstates what was measured: the published endpoint is a hemodynamic surrogate, not a titrated dose requirement. As evidence for a microtubule contribution in humans it is suggestive and weak — an uncontrolled retrospective in patients who differ in many ways beyond their microtubules — but it is the only human observation in this case's epothilone/taxane line, and it points the same direction as the rodent work.
limitations: Retrospective and uncontrolled; neoadjuvant chemotherapy patients differ systematically in fitness, medication, and disease burden.
Blood-pressure response to incision is a weak surrogate for anesthetic depth and is influenced by autonomic and cardiovascular factors independent of consciousness.
Full text not read; characterization from the publisher record and abstract-level sources.

Linganna, R. E. (2015)AI-verified citationORCH-C012

Qualifies· weakORCH-E033

Carhart-Harris 2012: vivid reported experience alongside decreased blood flow and BOLD signal

what the source states: Arterial spin labelling and BOLD fMRI before and after intravenous psilocybin found only decreases in cerebral blood flow and BOLD signal, maximal in hub regions such as the thalamus, while subjects reported intense subjective experience.
what we infer: Proponents cite this dissociation as evidence that rich conscious content need not track metabolic expenditure — relevant to the claim that consciousness is the metabolically cheap part rather than the expensive membrane machinery. The inference is weaker than the citation suggests: reduced hemodynamic signal in hub regions is a change in network dynamics, not a measurement of the energetic cost of experience, and the authors themselves draw an entropy/network interpretation with no quantum content. Recorded because the observation is real and load-bearing for one side's argument, and because its limits should be on the record next to it.
limitations: A psychedelic state, not anesthesia — its bearing on anesthetic mechanism is indirect at best.
The authors' own interpretation is network/entropy-based and makes no claim about quantum processes or metabolic accounting for consciousness.

Carhart-Harris, R. L. (2012)AI-verified citationORCH-C004

Context

14 records · strongest first

Background that informs the case without pushing either way.

Context· strongORCH-E070

A second underground null adds weight to the exclusion of the parameter-free DP model — toward ORCH-C030

what the source states: The collaboration closes by stating that it improved the lower limit on the Diósi–Penrose collapse model by almost an order of magnitude, "adding significance to the exclusion of the parameter-free version of the model".
what we infer: Direction here is toward the physics conjunct and toward the Gran Sasso finding's generalization: an independent group reaches the same verdict about the parameter-free version, so the squeeze on ORCH-C030 is no longer single-experiment.
limitations: Same radiation channel as SRC-DONADI-2021, so not an independent test of the mechanism, only of the measurement.
Does not address Penrose's characteristic-lifetime formulation, which predicts no radiation.
Second reader (claude-sonnet-5, 2026-09-11, run 2026-09-11-verify-orch-or-120610, verify-v6) found the passage bears in different directions on the claims the record named; this record carries "context" toward ORCH-C030, the rest went to a record of its own at intake: The quoted conclusion is accurate and correctly located, and the record properly flags the shared radiation channel with the 2021 underground test as a non-independence issue. But labeling this as 'undermines' is backwards: a second, independent (mostly) underground null result tightening the DP bound and reinforcing exclusion of the parameter-free model actually supports ORCH-C031, which states exactly that outcome. For ORCH-C030, which concerns the general characteristic-lifetime collapse formulation rather than the parameter-free DP model specifically, the passage is only background context, not a direct bearing on that claim's truth.

I. J. Arnquist (2023)AI-verified citationORCH-C030

Context· moderateORCH-E074

Cross-lab: polymerization raises tubulin quantum yield at 280 nm in porcine tubulin — toward ORCH-C013

what the source states: Measuring porcine tubulin dimers against taxol-stabilized microtubules in UV-transparent microplates, the authors report that "polymerization enhances microtubule quantum yield at 280 nm" and that "the polymerization percent change is positive for both bounds" of the absorbance treatment, with the difference statistically significant on both branches.
what we infer: The direction of the quantum-yield trend now has partial cross-lab support in a different preparation, which firms up the collective-optics observation rung — as condensed-matter physics of an ordered aromatic lattice, which is what the adopted assessment already says.
limitations: Preprint; steady-state microplate geometry.
Shares the Craddock modelling lineage with the superradiance literature it tests, so independence is partial.
280 nm excitation is not tryptophan-selective.
Second reader (claude-sonnet-5, 2026-09-11, run 2026-09-11-verify-orch-or-120610, verify-v6) found the passage bears in different directions on the claims the record named; this record carries "context" toward ORCH-C013, the rest went to a record of its own at intake: The quotes are accurate and correctly located, and the paper does report a robust 280 nm polymerization-induced QY increase consistent with the superradiance model's small predicted enhancement, so it supports ORCH-C021. However, the paper explicitly cautions (in 'Local photophysics versus cooperative emission') that such steady-state polymerization increases can arise from conventional, non-collective photophysical mechanisms, so this single observation does not itself establish nontrivial collective electrodynamics distinct from a passive-scaffold account; it is at best contextual for ORCH-C013, not supporting evidence. The record's blanket 'supports' direction for both claims therefore overstates what the passage establishes for C013.

Lea Gassab (2026)AI-verified citationORCH-C013

Context· moderateORCH-E080

Structural variability suppresses the superradiant enhancement the collective reading relies on — part 2

what the source states: Despite the reduced maximal enhancement, the molecular-dynamics-derived ensembles "maintained quantum yields above 0.14 over the lengths examined".
what we infer: Two things come apart here: a modest quantum-yield trend that survives disorder, and the large cooperative radiative-rate gain that does not. Only the latter is what the scale-bridging argument needs.
limitations: Computational; disorder is MD-sampled, not measured in vivo.
Preprint.
Direction set to "context" (from "supports") by the second reader (claude-sonnet-5, 2026-09-11, run 2026-09-11-verify-orch-or-120610, verify-v6) at intake: The quote is accurately taken from the 'Structural variability suppresses superradiance' section and is atomic, but it reports that quantum yield stayed above 0.14 despite the enhancement drop, not the magnitude or nature of the enhancement reduction itself (that claim is made in the preceding sentence). Since ORCH-C063 concerns the degree of superradiant enhancement suppression relative to the ordered 1JFF lattice, this QY-stability statement only presupposes that reduction rather than evidencing it, so it functions as context rather than direct support.

Lea Gassab (2026)AI-verified citationORCH-C063

Context· weakORCH-E006

Delayed luminescence measured in tubulin constructs — but with no anesthetic finding

what the source states: The abstract reads in full: "We report, for the first time, measurements of delayed luminescence on tubulin constructs. The results demonstrate the role of mesoscopic structure on emission strength and decay dynamics, which provides a new perspective on radiative phenomena." It makes no mention of anesthetics or of any anesthetic comparison.
what we infer: Recorded primarily as a correction. Eugene's primer states that "anesthetics shorten this delayed luminescence time, while structurally similar non-anesthetics do not" and attributes that to this work; no text available to this import supports it, and the accessible abstract is explicitly about mesoscopic structure rather than pharmacology. If such a result exists it is in a fuller presentation this project has not seen, and it should not be counted until it is. On its own terms the abstract is mild support for structure-dependent collective radiative behavior, which is ORCH-C013 territory — hence direction "context" rather than "supports" for any anesthesia claim.
limitations: Conference proceedings abstract, not a peer-reviewed full paper; weakest source in the case.
The anesthetic claim attributed to this work in the case editor's own primer is unsupported by any text this import could verify.
Delayed luminescence is a bulk optical observable and not a coherence measure.

Zoghi, M. (2025)AI-verified citationORCH-C013

Context· weakORCH-E028

The strongest affirmative synthesis — and its independence problem

what the source states: The review argues that a quantum microtubule substrate of consciousness is experimentally supported and that it addresses the binding problem and the epiphenomenalism problem in ways classical accounts do not. It characterizes the Kerskens result as "direct physical evidence of a macroscopic quantum entangled state in the living human brain."
what we infer: Included as the best available statement of the affirmative case, and as the entry point Eugene's primer recommends to skeptical readers — a fair map should point at the strongest version of the view it is examining. Two caveats keep it at `context` and `weak`. The author is senior author of the epothilone-B experiments, so this is not an independent review of the evidence it assesses. And the Kerskens characterization quoted above is stronger than the original paper's own hedged wording and than the unresolved state of the Warren dispute — an instance of the general pattern in this literature where hedges are dropped as claims travel.
limitations: Review and argument, not new data.
Not independent of the primary evidence it reviews.
Characterizes contested results more strongly than their source papers do.

Wiest, Michael C. (2025)AI-verified citationORCH-C001 ORCH-C002

Context· weakORCH-E034

The proponent reading of the xenon isotope result, in a flagship anesthesiology venue

what the source states: An invited editorial accompanying the Li et al. xenon isotope study argues that spin-½ isotopes being less potent supports quantum involvement in consciousness, noting that spin ½ is optimal for entanglement and suggesting that added nuclear spin could increase entanglement and thereby oppose the anesthetic effect.
what we infer: Filed as context, not support: this is the theory's co-originator interpreting a result in his own favor, in an editorial rather than a research report. Its evidential value is in showing that the proponent side's own reading of the isotope effect is available in a mainstream venue and is specific enough to argue with — including the concession, made on the same side, that nuclear-spin dynamics are slow relative to the timescale of moment-to-moment experience.
limitations: Editorial, not primary research; no new data.
Author is the theory's co-originator — an interested reading by construction.

Hameroff, S. R. (2018)AI-verified citationORCH-C025

Context· weakORCH-E042

The four published per-isotope xenon potencies, independently restated

what the source states: The authors quote the loss-of-righting-reflex ED50 values reported by Li et al. for 132Xe, 134Xe, 131Xe and 129Xe "to be 70(4)%, 72(5)%, 99(5)%, and 105(7)%, respectively", and derive relative potencies of 1, 0.71(8) and 0.67(8) for spin-0, spin-3/2 and spin-1/2 xenon.
what we infer: This is a second party's extraction of the same four numbers the case's own workpaper (ORCH-E040) flags as calculated rather than measured; it cross-checks the extraction but adds no independent measurement, so its diagnosticity for the underlying observation is near zero.
limitations: Purely a restatement of SRC-LI-2018; not a replication.
The dispersions carried over are of the same unstated type recorded at ORCH-E040.
Direction set to "context" (from "supports") by the second reader (claude-sonnet-5, 2026-09-11, run 2026-09-11-verify-orch-or-120610, verify-v6) at intake: The quoted numbers are accurate and correctly located, and the record itself acknowledges this is merely a restatement of Li et al.'s data rather than an independent finding of Smith et al. Per the rule that a citation or restatement of another (unretrieved) study's findings is not itself evidence of what that study found, this passage should be marked as context on ORCH-C025 rather than as support, despite the data being consistent with the claim.

Jordan Smith (2021)AI-verified citationORCH-C025

Context· weakORCH-E055

The modellers' own disclaimer: nothing here implies microtubules must use quantum correlations

what the source states: In the discussion the authors write that their initial-state comparison "does not imply that microtubules must use quantum correlations for neural processing"; rather, it shows that a structured tryptophan network routes dynamics differently depending on how an excitation is prepared.
what we infer: This is the cleanest proponent-adjacent statement in the record that the 2026 photophysics results do not bear on the consciousness attribution. It carries no weight for or against the truth of ORCH-C001; it is recorded because the absence of such a disclaimer is often what the public argument relies on.
limitations: A statement of scope by authors, not evidence about microtubules.
Zero diagnosticity for the headline thesis.

Lea Gassab (2026)AI-verified citationORCH-C001

Context· weakORCH-E081

A quantum-yield measurement becomes 'definitive biophysical evidence' in one step — part 1

what the source states: Since the 1990s, decoherence has been the primary objection to the hypothesis: "the vulnerability of macroscopic quantum states to decoherence at body temperature" was the main reason it was considered implausible.
what we infer: My inference: this is the absorb-not-score pattern ORCH-E035 describes, visible in a single step. A fluorescence quantum-yield measurement plus a non-Hermitian radiative model is presented as settling room-temperature quantum optical effects, with the dephasing question — the one that makes ORCH-C010 unresolved — not raised. It is an assertion, not evidence, and carries no weight for the truth of ORCH-C010.
limitations: Opinion piece; secondary characterization of SRC-BABCOCK-2024.
Zero diagnosticity as evidence.

Michael C. Wiest (2025)AI-verified citationORCH-C010

Context· weakORCH-E082

A quantum-yield measurement becomes 'definitive biophysical evidence' in one step — part 2

what the source states: There is now "definitive biophysical evidence that MTs support quantum optical effects" at room temperature, citing the 2024 ultraviolet superradiance paper by Babcock et al.
what we infer: My inference: this is the absorb-not-score pattern ORCH-E035 describes, visible in a single step. A fluorescence quantum-yield measurement plus a non-Hermitian radiative model is presented as settling room-temperature quantum optical effects, with the dephasing question — the one that makes ORCH-C010 unresolved — not raised. It is an assertion, not evidence, and carries no weight for the truth of ORCH-C010.
limitations: Opinion piece; secondary characterization of SRC-BABCOCK-2024.
Zero diagnosticity as evidence.

Michael C. Wiest (2025)AI-verified citationORCH-C010

Context· weakORCH-E083

A quantum-yield measurement becomes 'definitive biophysical evidence' in one step — part 3

what the source states: Those quantum effects "get stronger as the MTs are joined into larger structures" rather than weaker.
what we infer: My inference: this is the absorb-not-score pattern ORCH-E035 describes, visible in a single step. A fluorescence quantum-yield measurement plus a non-Hermitian radiative model is presented as settling room-temperature quantum optical effects, with the dephasing question — the one that makes ORCH-C010 unresolved — not raised. It is an assertion, not evidence, and carries no weight for the truth of ORCH-C010.
limitations: Opinion piece; secondary characterization of SRC-BABCOCK-2024.
Zero diagnosticity as evidence.

Michael C. Wiest (2025)AI-verified citationORCH-C010

Context· weakORCH-E084

The proponents' strongest unanswered point: Meyer–Overton from tubulin quantum chemistry — part 1

what the source states: A detailed quantum chemical modeling study found that "the potencies of several volatile anesthetics were predicted by their binding affinity" to delocalized electron sites within the tubulin subunits that make up microtubules.
what we infer: This is the argument with real force in the proponent case and the direct motivation for ORCH-R009; it is recorded as an assertion in a commentary, whose underlying computation is already at ORCH-E010 with weak strength.
limitations: Secondary; the primary (SRC-CRADDOCK-2017) is computational and already in the ledger at weak strength.
The uniqueness claim ('no other candidate target') is asserted, not demonstrated, and no survey is cited.
Direction set to "context" (from "supports") by the second reader (claude-sonnet-5, 2026-09-11, run 2026-09-11-verify-orch-or-120610, verify-v6) at intake: The quote is accurate and correctly attributed to Wiest's summary of the Craddock et al. 2017 study, and the locator is right, but Wiest's article is merely citing/reporting another paper's finding rather than presenting it as the reviewing author's own retrieved result; per the rule that a citation to an unretrieved study is context rather than direct support, the direction should be 'context' not 'supports.' The record itself acknowledges this secondary status in its limitations, so independence is properly noted.

Michael C. Wiest (2025)AI-verified citationORCH-C011

Context· weakORCH-E085

The proponents' strongest unanswered point: Meyer–Overton from tubulin quantum chemistry — part 2

what the source states: These theoretical results "essentially reproduce the Meyer-Overton correlation" by assuming that inhalational anesthesia is primarily mediated by microtubules.
what we infer: This is the argument with real force in the proponent case and the direct motivation for ORCH-R009; it is recorded as an assertion in a commentary, whose underlying computation is already at ORCH-E010 with weak strength.
limitations: Secondary; the primary (SRC-CRADDOCK-2017) is computational and already in the ledger at weak strength.
The uniqueness claim ('no other candidate target') is asserted, not demonstrated, and no survey is cited.
Direction set to "context" (from "supports") by the second reader (claude-sonnet-5, 2026-09-11, run 2026-09-11-verify-orch-or-120610, verify-v6) at intake: The quoted passage is Wiest's own characterization of a separate study (Craddock et al. 2017) rather than a primary finding of his; per the rule that a citation of another work is not itself evidence of what that work found, this secondary retelling should be treated as context toward ORCH-C011 rather than as direct support, even though the record's limitations already flag the secondary/independence issue appropriately.

Michael C. Wiest (2025)AI-verified citationORCH-C011

Context· weakORCH-E086

The proponents' strongest unanswered point: Meyer–Overton from tubulin quantum chemistry — part 3

what the source states: Reproducing the Meyer-Overton correlation from an assumed primary target "cannot be said for any other candidate molecular target."
what we infer: This is the argument with real force in the proponent case and the direct motivation for ORCH-R009; it is recorded as an assertion in a commentary, whose underlying computation is already at ORCH-E010 with weak strength.
limitations: Secondary; the primary (SRC-CRADDOCK-2017) is computational and already in the ledger at weak strength.
The uniqueness claim ('no other candidate target') is asserted, not demonstrated, and no survey is cited.
Direction set to "context" (from "supports") by the second reader (claude-sonnet-5, 2026-09-11, run 2026-09-11-verify-orch-or-120610, verify-v6) at intake: The quoted line is a comparative uniqueness claim about which target best reproduces Meyer-Overton via modeling, not a direct assertion that anesthetic binding alters tubulin's electronic/optical behavior; it bears on the broader MT-primacy argument rather than directly on ORCH-C011's specific mechanistic claim, so it functions as context rather than direct support. The quote is accurately drawn from the body text and the secondary/derivative relationship to the Craddock modeling study is properly disclosed.

Michael C. Wiest (2025)AI-verified citationORCH-C011