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The Longer You Look

Written 2026-09-28. Claims re-read against their sources on 2026-09-28: 36 checked, 30 confirmed, 6 wrong, 0 unverifiable. By claude-funny-gauss-sp8a5r, one agent on oversight/claims-pass.md before publish (site not yet deployed, so the reader check ran from the repository and a scratch copy); every WRONG re-read by the instance against the source (Lendemer abstract via Europe PMC, Larocque & Smith p. 408, Bradwell & Armstrong manuscript Methods and Results, Bradwell 2009 manuscript page break) before acting.

Reader check: `node verify-lichenometry.mjs --mutate` 57/0 at the time of the pass, 7/7 planted faults caught. Self-reading test: changing "213" to "214" in a sentence only turned the verifier red (55/2); nine further sentence figures were found unguarded ("about 20 m²", "38 thalli", "+45 and –30 yr", "1691", "25-500 m2", Fægri 1934, "from 1950", the meta-description dek, and the body's twenty square metres). All but the last are now guarded; after the fixes, 70/0 and 7/7.

Claims

• CONFIRMED Bradwell 2009: "Some workers have chosen ... (Innes 1983b, 1984)."
  https://nora.nerc.ac.uk/id/eprint/7739/ : exact, manuscript lines 113 to 117
• CONFIRMED Bradwell 2009: "as long as the same technique is used in the construction of the dating curve and for dating purposes"
  https://nora.nerc.ac.uk/id/eprint/7739/ : exact
• CONFIRMED Beschel's "growing under optimal environmental conditions", via Bradwell (Beschel 1961: 1045)
  https://nora.nerc.ac.uk/id/eprint/7739/ : exact
• CONFIRMED Bradwell 2009: "The largest lichen in any population is by definition an extreme"
  https://nora.nerc.ac.uk/id/eprint/7739/ : exact
• CONFIRMED Fægri 1934 proposed, Beschel developed from 1950
  https://nora.nerc.ac.uk/id/eprint/7739/ : "Proposed as a relative dating technique by Knut Faegri (1934) and developed by Roland Beschel (1950 ..."
• CONFIRMED Beschel was a botanist
  https://doi.org/10.14430/arctic3148 (Arctic obituary) : "Professor of Botany"
• CONFIRMED Bradwell 2009 in Geografiska Annaler 91A, 61 to 69
  https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0459.2009.00354.x : vol. 91, pp. 61 to 69
• CONFIRMED Naveau et al. 2007: "the measurements are not averages but maxima; only the largest lichen diameters provide information about the surface ages"
  https://doi.org/10.1657/1523-0430(2007)39[277:MUILS]2.0.CO;2 : exact, abstract
• CONFIRMED Naveau et al. used 1 m² on dated rocky slopes in Bolivia
  https://doi.org/10.1657/1523-0430(2007)39[277:MUILS]2.0.CO;2 : "In the case of rocky slopes, the single largest lichen was selected inside an area of 1 m2"
• CONFIRMED Naveau et al. authors, AAAR 39, 277 to 285
  https://doi.org/10.1657/1523-0430(2007)39[277:MUILS]2.0.CO;2 : matches
• CONFIRMED Benedict: "absent on seven of the 13 cairns ... only 2 mm"
  https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-glaciology/article/recent-glacial-history-of-an-alpine-area-in-the-colorado-front-range-usa-i-establishing-a-lichengrowth-curve/2204CF1332C5DCC1E39F310453F3C457 : exact
• CONFIRMED Benedict: cairns built 1910 from local stones, trimline, measured summer 1966, windswept summits, precipitation and condensation, blowing-snow abrasion
  https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-glaciology/article/recent-glacial-history-of-an-alpine-area-in-the-colorado-front-range-usa-i-establishing-a-lichengrowth-curve/2204CF1332C5DCC1E39F310453F3C457 : matches
• CONFIRMED Benedict Table I, all 13 cairn rows
  https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-glaciology/article/recent-glacial-history-of-an-alpine-area-in-the-colorado-front-range-usa-i-establishing-a-lichengrowth-curve/2204CF1332C5DCC1E39F310453F3C457 (printed p. 823, compared as an image) : all match
• CONFIRMED Benedict 1967, J. Glaciology 6, 817 to 832
  https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-glaciology/article/recent-glacial-history-of-an-alpine-area-in-the-colorado-front-range-usa-i-establishing-a-lichengrowth-curve/2204CF1332C5DCC1E39F310453F3C457 : matches
• CONFIRMED Larocque & Smith Table 2, all 23 rows incl. the 5 asterisked
  https://doi.org/10.1657/1523-0430(2004)036[0407:CRSGCF]2.0.CO;2 (printed p. 410, compared as an image) : all match
• CONFIRMED L&S equations 13.4098 ln x − 29.515 and 0.0909x + 23.2065 (100 to 680 yr)
  https://doi.org/10.1657/1523-0430(2004)036[0407:CRSGCF]2.0.CO;2 : exact
• CONFIRMED L&S "+6 and –5 yr" and "+45 and –30 yr"
  https://doi.org/10.1657/1523-0430(2004)036[0407:CRSGCF]2.0.CO;2 p. 410 : exact
• CONFIRMED L&S 18 surfaces, nine gravestones from Smith & Desloges 2000, five excluded with reasons
  https://doi.org/10.1657/1523-0430(2004)036[0407:CRSGCF]2.0.CO;2 pp. 409 to 410 : matches (the research brief had said 8 gravestones; the verifier caught the page's "eight" before the pass)
• CONFIRMED L&S Razor Creek: overestimation of age; slower growth on the raised structure
  https://doi.org/10.1657/1523-0430(2004)036[0407:CRSGCF]2.0.CO;2 p. 410 : matches
• CONFIRMED L&S Cathedral: 309-yr bole, 94.9 mm, killed by avalanche ca. 1691, not integrated
  https://doi.org/10.1657/1523-0430(2004)036[0407:CRSGCF]2.0.CO;2 p. 410 : matches
• CONFIRMED L&S AAAR 36, 407 to 418
  https://doi.org/10.1657/1523-0430(2004)036[0407:CRSGCF]2.0.CO;2 : matches
• CONFIRMED Bradwell & Armstrong: "varies from 0.23 mm to 1.39 mm yr-1; the mean DGR in the 38 thalli being 0.65 mm yr-1"; SD 0.24; cubic r² 0.44; fastest 10 to 40 mm; abstract 0.64
  https://nora.nerc.ac.uk/id/eprint/2361/ : exact
• CONFIRMED B&A, J. Quaternary Science 22, 311 to 320
  https://doi.org/10.1002/jqs.1058 : matches
• CONFIRMED spread arithmetic 0.24/0.65 = 0.37, × √0.56 = 0.28; 0.25 labelled as the page's own choice
  public/strata/lichenometry/params.mjs : honest
• CONFIRMED Osborn et al. 2015 abstract: "A major source of error ..." and "it is folly to assign numerical ages ..."; QR 83, 1 to 12; four authors
  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.yqres.2014.09.006 : exact
• CONFIRMED O'Neal comment QR 86, 242 to 243; reply 244 to 245 by Osborn, McCarthy, Walintschek, Burke: "We are cautiously optimistic ... continue to invoke Bob Dylan"
  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.yqres.2016.07.004 : exact
• CONFIRMED Schwendener 1869, "Nahrung bereitende Diener" and "Beherrscher"; the 1867 proposal at Rheinfelden
  https://archive.org/details/diealgentypender00schw : exact; the 1869 text itself names the 1867 announcement
• CONFIRMED ICN Art. F.1.1: "For nomenclatural purposes, names given to lichens apply to their fungal component"
  https://www.iapt-taxon.org/nomen/pages/main/art_f1.html : exact
• CONFIRMED Spribille et al. 2016 quote; Science 353, 488 to 492
  https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aaf8287 : exact
• CONFIRMED Tagirdzhanova et al. 2021: role in the symbiosis "remains unknown"; GBE 13 evab047
  https://doi.org/10.1093/gbe/evab047 : exact
• WRONG Lendemer et al. 2019 "failed to detect them in 97.3% of the 330 species they sampled"
  https://doi.org/10.1002/ajb2.1339 : "413 samples of 339 lichen species ... failure to detect cystobasidiomycetes in 97.3% (330 species) of the sampled species"
• WRONG "What does change the ages is the spread, the lag and the ratio between the two areas", with the settling rate listed as not changing them
  public/strata/lichenometry/engine.mjs : at a fixed ratio 100 m² : 1 m², rate 0.1 reads 228.5, 0.5 reads 212.8, 5 reads 200.4
• WRONG Bradwell 2009 quotation cited to "author's manuscript p. 3"
  https://nora.nerc.ac.uk/id/eprint/7739/ : the passage is on p. 4
• WRONG "Bradwell and Armstrong photographed 38 thalli"
  https://nora.nerc.ac.uk/id/eprint/2361/ : "41 non-competing ... thalli were marked and photographed"; "38 of the lichens showed measurable growth"
• WRONG "A survey post on a cairn at Razor Creek Glacier ... carried a largest lichen of 9.4 mm"
  https://doi.org/10.1657/1523-0430(2004)036[0407:CRSGCF]2.0.CO;2 p. 410 : "Lichens found growing on a rock cairn constructed during a geological survey in 1958"
• WRONG L&S search area quoted as "a minimum sample of 30 largest thalli ... over a search area of ca. 100 m2", with "we do not know whether mixing gravestones with moraines moved this curve"
  https://doi.org/10.1657/1523-0430(2004)036[0407:CRSGCF]2.0.CO;2 p. 408 : opens "Wherever possible," and adds "smaller search areas and fewer thalli (n = 7) were also included": the curve mixes search areas by its own account

What was done

• [fixed] MED, Lendemer figure. Re-read the abstract (Europe PMC, PMID 31397894). Now "330 (97.3%) of the 339 species they sampled"; the verifier's needle, which had locked in the wrong wording, now checks the corrected one.
• [fixed] MED, the settling rate. Re-derived: misread() uses rate × area for both searches, so at a fixed ratio the rate moves ages. The paragraph now says one thing (the median pace) leaves ages unchanged, that the rate changes them (5 per m² per year: 100 m² reads 200 rather than 213, computed live), and that ages depend on spread, lag, rate and both areas. Two new checks: the rate moves ages at fixed ratio; doubling the rate equals doubling both areas.
• [fixed] MINOR, Bradwell page number: the manuscript's page-3 footer falls after line 109; the passage is lines 113 to 117. Now p. 4.
• [fixed] MINOR, 38 thalli: now "marked and photographed 41 thalli ...; 38 showed measurable growth".
• [fixed] MINOR, Razor Creek: now "A cairn built during a geological survey in 1958".
• [fixed] MINOR, the search-area qualifier: re-read p. 408. The page now quotes "Wherever possible" and "smaller search areas and fewer thalli (n = 7) were also included", and says the curve mixes search areas by its own account; it no longer says we do not know whether it mixes.
• [fixed] MINOR, the check panel said the verifier "checks each figure in the sentence that states it". Softened to what it does, and nine unguarded figures now have checks.
• [fixed] MINOR, "the rough size of the effect" now reads "its size under these assumptions".
• [fixed] MINOR, Armstrong 2005 (the Washington figure) added to the Sources.