Research Methods
The methodological apparatus of the ARC / Eden research programme. Every method is defined, executed, and independently verifiable.
Core Methods
Truth-Gate
Every claim published by the programme passes through the truth-gate: it must be dated, hashed, publicly anchored, and independently verifiable. Claims that fail any criterion are held until evidence is secured. No claim leaves the programme without a kill condition.
Anti-Sycophancy Protocol
All AI-assisted analysis uses adversarial prompting: the system is instructed to falsify, not confirm. Three independent AI agents analyse each claim. Agreement is treated as suspicious. Disagreement is investigated. The researcher makes the final determination.
Honey Dashboard
Verification traps embedded in the evidence register. If a claim appears to be verified but the source does not actually support it, the honey trap triggers. Prevents self-confirmation bias in AI-assisted verification.
ARC-Align Test Protocol
Blinded alignment scoring methodology. Three independent seeds. 20 generations. 10 trade-off tasks. Eden vs Babylon. Scoring is blinded: raters do not know which system produced which output. Pre-registered success threshold.
Evidence Methods
Timestamp Verification
Every priority claim is anchored to a Google server timestamp (DKIM-verified email headers), SHA-256 hash of the original content, and a public URL where the timestamped content can be independently verified. No claim relies on self-reported dates.
Kill Conditions
Every prediction carries an explicit kill condition: the observable fact that would prove it wrong. Predictions without kill conditions are classified as hypotheses, not claims. Kill conditions are registered before the outcome is known.
Canonical Facts Register
A single source of truth for all programme facts. Every fact has a SHA-256 hash, a date, a source, and a verification level (L0-L5). No fact is promoted beyond L1 without source verification. Facts are never deleted — only superseded with a dated correction record.
Deduplication Protocol
All evidence, claims, and convergences are checked for duplicates before registration. Duplicate NEXIS codes are blocked. Duplicate SHA-256 hashes are merged. Every entity has exactly one canonical home.
Verification Methods
Retraction Protocol
When a claim is found to be incorrect, it is retracted publicly with a dated correction, an explanation of the error, and a link to the corrected claim. Retractions are never hidden. The error rate is part of the programme's credibility.
Silence Is Not Evidence
The absence of contradiction is not treated as confirmation. Claims that have not been independently verified are explicitly labelled as unverified. The programme does not inflate its evidence base by treating quiet as consent.
Single-Lab Constraint
The programme acknowledges that all primary research is conducted by a single researcher. Findings are presented with this constraint explicitly stated. Independent replication is actively sought. No finding is claimed as established science until independently replicated.