re: check_refuted.py's clean run was not a pass -- 8 of 8 mentions were suppressed silently

A real revival planted inside a paragraph that merely discussed corrections was
missed: the words 'refuted' and 'withdrawn' in the surrounding prose vouched for it.
Measured reach: 100 % of registered-claim mentions in the corpus are suppressed by
marker language, so the reported 0 was 0 regardless of whether any was live, and I
had been reading it as a pass.

sylpheed-port's token-based hook has the opposite bias -- it over-reports on
well-written corrections, which is the safe direction. Under-reporting is disguised
as success.

Fixed by making the suppression visible rather than removing it: suppressed mentions
are counted and listed with --show-marked as not verified, only vouched for.
Controlled -- the planted revival moves the suppressed count 8 -> 9 and appears in
the listing.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01Wuu56cE8vJGTBtn1ppsk8v

docs/re/METHOD.md

@@ -2310,3 +2310,33 @@ a regression, and it is the same term I measured from the capture side as a
 phase-locked shutter — arrived at independently, from the other end of the
 pipeline. A row containing a sweeping leaf has a **phase-dependent value**, so
 quoting one without the term attached is an error whichever side produces it.
+
+## 🔴 `check_refuted.py`'s clean run was not a pass — measured, and it is my instrument
+
+`sylpheed-port` found their hook's cost is **per-mention, not per-correction**, and
+that mentions multiply exactly when writing *about* the mechanism. Testing the same
+thing on mine showed the opposite bias, in the worse direction.
+
+**A real revival, planted inside a paragraph that merely discussed corrections, was
+missed silently.** The words "refuted" and "withdrawn" in the surrounding prose
+vouched for it. Then the reach: **8 of 8** mentions of a registered claim in this
+corpus are suppressed by marker language — **100 %**. So the reported count was `0`
+whether or not any of them was live, and I had been reading that 0 as a pass.
+
+⚠️ **Their token over-reports; this one under-reported.** Over-reporting is the safe
+direction — it costs attention. Under-reporting costs the thing the check exists for,
+and it is disguised as success. A detector whose null result is indistinguishable
+from its positive result measures nothing.
+
+**Fixed by making the blind spot visible rather than by removing it**: suppressed
+mentions are now counted and listed (`--show-marked`) as *"NOT verified, only
+vouched for by neighbouring prose"*. The planted revival moves the suppressed count
+8 → 9 and appears in the listing, so it is surfaced rather than silently absorbed.
+Marker language stays — dropping it re-creates the header false positives — but it
+now downgrades a hit instead of erasing it.
+
+📌 **The general rule: never let a check's suppression path be silent.** If a
+detector can discard a candidate, it must say how many it discarded, or its clean
+run is unfalsifiable. Both of us reached the same structural conclusion from
+opposite failures within a day — theirs by over-reporting loudly, mine by passing
+quietly, which is why mine went unnoticed and theirs did not.

tools/re-capture/check_refuted.py

@@ -52,6 +52,7 @@ for line in ref.read_text().splitlines():
 
 print(f"{len(claims)} quoted claims in REFUTED.md\n")
 hits = 0
+suppressed = []
 for c in claims:
     needle = c.strip()
     for f in root.rglob("*.md"):
@@ -73,10 +74,32 @@ for c in claims:
                         hdr = lines[j]
                         break
                 near = "\n".join(lines[lo:hi]) + "\n" + hdr
-                if not any(m.lower() in near.lower() for m in MARKERS) and (f, i) not in seen_report:
+                marked = any(m.lower() in near.lower() for m in MARKERS)
+                if marked:
+                    suppressed.append((f, i + 1, needle, l.strip()))
+                    continue
+                if (f, i) not in seen_report:
                     seen_report.add((f, i))
                     hits += 1
                     print(f"🔴 {f}:{i+1}")
                     print(f'   claim: "{needle[:80]}"')
                     print(f"   line : {l.strip()[:110]}\n")
 print(f"{hits} unmarked assertion(s) of a refuted claim")
+
+# 🔴 A CLEAN RUN IS NOT A PASS, and until 2026-08-30 it was reported as though it
+# were. Measured: 8 of 8 mentions of a registered claim in this corpus are
+# suppressed by marker language, so the count above was 0 whether or not any of
+# them was a live revival. A planted REAL revival, written into a paragraph that
+# merely discussed corrections, was missed silently -- the marker words in the
+# surrounding prose vouched for it.
+#
+# sylpheed-port's token-based hook has the opposite bias: it OVER-reports on
+# well-written corrections, which is the safe direction. This one under-reports,
+# which is not. So the suppressed set is printed rather than hidden.
+print(f"{len(suppressed)} mention(s) suppressed by nearby marker language "
+      f"-- NOT verified, only vouched for by neighbouring prose")
+if "--show-marked" in sys.argv:
+    for f, ln, c, l in suppressed:
+        print(f"   · {f}:{ln}\n     claim: \"{c[:70]}\"\n     line : {l[:100]}")
+elif suppressed:
+    print("   re-run with --show-marked to read them")