Conjectures and conspiracy theories

• Alternative mechanism. Otsuka et al.: Evolution of nuclear shells due to the tensor force (2005) — A nuclear-interaction explanation against which a heavy-particle-scale interpretation should be compared.
• Evaluated data. NNDC NuDat 3 — Nuclear levels, decay data and separation energies for quantitative checks; a changing database, so record the downloaded evaluation and date.

Research direction. Fix the proposed mapping and allowed parameters before examining held-out nuclei. Compare its predictive improvement with nuclear-structure baselines, including uncertainty and the number of numerical relationships searched.

• Related model, not confirmation. Sumino: Family Gauge Symmetry and Koide's Mass Formula (2008) — Proposes cancellation of QED corrections through family gauge symmetry; a different dynamical proposal from the decay-channel interpretation.

Research direction. Specify pole versus running masses and the renormalisation scale. Separate exact identities, fitted parameters and predictions, and test radiative stability rather than only the closeness of a numerical match.

• Independent neighbouring programme. Dosch, de Téramond and Brodsky: superconformal baryon–meson symmetry (2015) — Connects hadronic spectra through superconformal quantum mechanics and light-front holography. It is not an observation of elementary supersymmetry or a derivation of the pion–muon assignment.

Research direction. Compare the actual supercharges, representations and predicted spectra, not just the word supersymmetry. Identify one observable or consistency condition that distinguishes the sBootstrap from this hadronic construction.

• Evaluated nuclear data. ENSDF: adopted levels of mercury-201 — Includes the evaluated alpha-decay energy balance. An energetically allowed channel is not a measured decay rate or a way to induce it.
• Data documentation. NuDat guide — Explains the nuclear-structure and decay quantities available for checking the proposed chain.

Research direction. Recalculate the energy balance with a dated mass evaluation and quantify the barrier and rate. Keep this a documentary and theoretical investigation: no mercury-handling or irradiation experiment is proposed here.

• Primary text for comparison. Zhuangzi: Knowledge Rambling in the North — Chinese text and translation allow the existence/non-existence vocabulary to be checked without relying only on a modern paraphrase.

Research direction. Pin each claimed parallel to passages, textual layers and translation choices. A proposed historical connection needs dated intermediaries or transmission evidence beyond resemblance; this source does not supply that bridge.

• Manuscript-based scholarship. Reviel Netz: The Method and infinity — Discusses newly deciphered material in Archimedes' Method and its treatment of infinity, providing a concrete ancient mathematical comparison.

Research direction. Separate what the ancient text states from what a modern reconstruction can derive. The palimpsest supplies evidence about Archimedes, not independent confirmation of every proposed Democritean or calculus genealogy.

• Statistical baseline. Marx: precision of Ptolemy's geographic coordinates (2011) — Examines coordinate resolution and statistical structure, relevant alternatives to interpreting preferred distances as itinerary units.
• Related reconstruction. Marx: rectification of Ptolemy's Scotland — Uses regional distortions and identified places in a geodetic reconstruction; useful methodological comparison, not validation of the specific route hypothesis.

Research direction. Freeze an edition and secure place identifications, fit on a training subset, and predict withheld places or independently attested route relationships. Test rounding and regional distortion as competing explanations.

• Literary chronology. University of Rochester, Camelot Project: Perceval — A scholarly guide to Perceval and the Grail tradition, beginning with Chrétien's romance; an entry point to texts and bibliography rather than evidence for an Aragonese origin.

Research direction. Build a dated chain of distinctive motifs, texts and plausible intermediaries along the proposed route. Distinguish literary transmission from the identification or authenticity of a surviving cup.

• Competing organisational explanation. University of Virginia: Mapping the Catalogue of Ships — Tests the catalogue's arrangement against Greek geography. This offers a concrete alternative to an astronomical memory scheme.
• Literary analysis. Benjamin Sammons: The Art and Rhetoric of the Homeric Catalogue (2010) — Studies the catalogue as an active poetic form; the linked publisher record is not a promise of free full-text access.

Research direction. Fix the astronomical mapping rules and historical sky model before testing an unused part of the sequence. Compare with geography, poetic structure and shuffled controls; no catalogue-to-catalogue transmission follows from a good fit alone.

• Primary liturgical text. Siddur Sefard: Bedtime Shema — Contains the directional arrangement of Michael, Gabriel, Uriel and Raphael. It documents a prayer formulation, not its alleged stellar origin; the rite's name should not be treated as a synonym for every Sephardic tradition.

Research direction. Compare dated versions of the prayers and diagrams. Test whether the proposed stellar identifications make specific predictions that other directional or protective interpretations do not.

• Primary laboratory manuscript. The Chymistry of Isaac Newton: laboratory notebook, Cambridge Add. MS. 3975 — An edited experimental notebook, demonstrating a practical strand of alchemical work without establishing the particular lost-knowledge narrative.
• Research method. Indiana University: project description and historical replication — Explains combining textual work with controlled reconstruction of processes and apparatus. Historical recipes are not presented here as safe instructions to try.

Research direction. Choose a single alleged conversion of practical instruction into allegory and follow its manuscript history. The later radioactivity/occultist connection requires dated writings and laboratory records of its own.

• Local testimony. Ayuntamiento de Aguarón: traditions — Records the custom of eating culeca with chocolate near the hermitage; evidence of local practice, not prehistoric continuity.
• Regional comparison. Ayuntamiento de Grisel: festivals and traditions — Describes communal distribution of culeca within a different local commemorative tradition.

Research direction. Collect dated photographs, recipes, names and bakers' testimony village by village. Test the age and distribution of the female-shaped variant before connecting it to prehistoric figurines.

• Textual scholarship. Andrew George: The civilizing of Ea-Enkidu: an unusual tablet of the Babylonian Gilgameš epic — Discusses the bread-and-ale episode and manuscript variation in the civilising of Enkidu; a check on what the surviving texts actually contain. This repository record replaces the unreachable older SOAS PDF address; automated access may be restricted.
• Edition and translation record. SOAS: George's Epic of Gilgamesh translation — A route to the source tradition and translation, distinct from a claim of descent of later communion rituals.

Research direction. Identify the version and date of each compared passage, then test distinctive shared details and a possible transmission chain. A meal that marks civilisation is not automatically the same ritual as communion.

• Material documentation. CyArk: Rosslyn Chapel documentation — Digital recording made in connection with conservation gives a material reference for the carvings, independent of claims about what later rituals mean.

Research direction. Establish the carving's date and restoration history, and the earliest attestation of the particular ritual. Chronological precedence is necessary for borrowing but does not by itself prove the direction of influence.

• Ethnographic context. Instituto Socioambiental: Pirahã — Describes historical relations with the Mura, cosmology, naming and ritual. It challenges a blanket portrayal of an absence of cosmological narratives, but does not establish the proposed catastrophe-reading of a particular myth.
• Evidence for incorporation and refuge. Instituto Socioambiental: Mura, especially “O Mura Agigantado” — Describes murificação, incorporating people fleeing missions and colonial settlements, including Indigenous people of different origins, Black people and poor whites. This concerns the broader Mura history; it does not automatically establish a composite origin for Pirahã cosmology.
• Earlier ethnographic account. Curt Nimuendajú: The Mura and Pirahá (1948) — Reports incorporation of refugees and captives among the Mura before the 1784 peace, while explicitly leaving their cultural influence unresolved. Read this older account with attention to its dated categories and distinctions between groups.
• Recent reassessment. Marta Amoroso: Tangled stories, underground archives (2023) — Examines relationships linking Mura and Pirahã territories and questions the rigid separation produced by administrative and anthropological classifications. The article's abstract supports examining connections, not assuming that the groups' histories are interchangeable.

Research direction. Trace each story to a recorded speaker, language, date and translation; compare variants with independently documented events and with traditions of specifically identified neighbouring or incorporated groups. Distinguish population incorporation, narrative borrowing and later reinterpretation: evidence for one is not automatically evidence for all three. Do not replace the community's own meanings with an inferred historical allegory.

• Primary literary text. Cervantes Project / AHCT: Los baños de Argel — A text based on the 1615 edition, for checking the letters, intermediaries and plot directly.
• Documentary testimony. La Información de Argel (1580) — Witness testimony requested by Cervantes after his ransom. Its purpose and circumstances matter when assessing it; it is not evidence that he invented the alleged scams.

Research direction. Keep the literary-pattern claim separate from biography. The stronger allegation needs independent contemporary evidence, not inference from a fictional character's actions.

• Historical infrastructure. González Cárceles: La recuperación del palacete (2009), printed p. 23 — Identifies the Cantarranas collector on wartime plans near the Casa de Oficios and distinguishes a northern drainage network. This recovers the study cited in the original post, not its operational state in 1970.
• Later landscape research. Nicholas Ford Callaway: La Vaguada de Cantarranas (2023 thesis) — The repository description identifies archival and oral work on the valley's infilling through the 1960s. The full 93 MB thesis has not been examined for this index.
• Author's related book. Callaway: Cantarranas (2025) — A further reading lead on the lost landscape, not testimony confirming radioactive contamination.
• Construction record. Congress: 1992 answer on project CITA, printed p. 154 — Records classification of the works by the Council of Ministers on 4 November 1988. It does not document removal of the particular conduit.
• Retrospective account. Álvaro Frutos: Caminando por el búnker de la Moncloa (2020) — Places an initial municipal application in 1986 and operation by 1992; a lead to check against contemporary construction files.
• Archive references. José Herrera Plaza: El final de la fabricación de plutonio en España (2022), pp. 230–231 — Cites post-accident works and sewer-disconnection correspondence: AGA (13)004.012, 75/08517 and 71/21931. These are leads to original files, not proof of a palace exposure.

Research direction. Reconstruct the wartime collector, its November 1970 connections, and any later diversion or demolition as separate dated states. The owner's recollection that bunker works removed the route remains unverified here; 1960s valley infilling is a distinct event. Find the original report behind the 2016 comment's leakage figure and seek pre-works surveys and completion records. None of these readings establishes an individual's dose or medical causation.

• Alternative economic mechanism. Banco de España: The financial transmission of housing bubbles—evidence from Spain (2018) — Studies credit transmission to other sectors; it explicitly does not establish whether the Spanish housing cycle was driven by a bubble. It provides a financial mechanism to compare with political-incentive explanations.

Research direction. Separate the tax-incentive and corruption-selection hypotheses. Use independently measured incentives and decisions, dated before the outcomes, with comparisons that address credit conditions and reverse causation.

• Institutional self-description. Trilateral Commission: leadership, members and fellows — A current membership source and account of regional organisation. It is neither an independent audit nor a reconstruction of the 2008 list.

Research direction. For a historical network claim, preserve a dated membership list and establish the specific decisions and communications in question. Shared membership alone is not evidence of covert coordination.

• Related methodological initiative. Center for Open Science: Registered Reports — Describes review of questions and methods before results, reducing incentives to publish only a preferred outcome. This is a later methodological comparison, not evidence for the correctness of a rejected conjecture.

Research direction. Turn one short proposal into a dated protocol with a prediction, alternatives, a failure criterion and a place to record criticism and corrections. Exploratory work can remain exploratory if it is labelled as such.

• Supporting research for an ingredient. Cox and colleagues: biomagnification of cyanobacterial neurotoxins (2003) — Reports evidence used to develop the cycad–bat–human BMAA hypothesis; the proposed exposure chain should not be confused with demonstrated causation of the disease.
• Contrary analytical evidence. Foss, Chernoff and Aubel: analysis of flying-fox specimens (2018) — Reports no BMAA above the stated free/total detection thresholds in the specimens examined, making analytical methods and sample comparability important parts of the debate.

Research direction. Compare specimens, analytical specificity, detection limits and exposure estimates across studies. Preserve the bird-to-bat correction, but do not treat that correction as confirmation of the wider medical hypothesis.