diff --git a/docs/re/METHOD.md b/docs/re/METHOD.md
index 509a4885..e43eab9e 100644
--- a/docs/re/METHOD.md
+++ b/docs/re/METHOD.md
@@ -3142,3 +3142,35 @@ correlates with quality is invisible by construction.** Their unlabelled entries
 were not the sloppy ones — they were so well-evidenced that nobody thought to mark
 them. Both audits were measuring **self-declaration, not grounding**, and a
 well-evidenced claim is exactly the one that never declares itself.
+
+### Tested their mechanism here — it does not reproduce, and the real predictor is different
+
+`sylpheed-port` sharpened the blind-spot finding to *"well-argued prose never cited
+anything — the detail is what made it look sourced"*, with three `why` fields of
+1 041–1 402 characters, all detailed, all uncited.
+
+❌ **That does not reproduce in this corpus.** Of 57 `HANDOFF.md` sections
+asserting measured/undecodable/authored, the cited ones have a **median of 2 502
+characters** and the uncited **2 386** — indistinguishable. Length and care do not
+predict citation here.
+
+✅ **The predictor is RECENCY:**
+
+| date | cited | uncited | rate |
+|---|---|---|---|
+| 2026-08-29 | 19 | 5 | **79 %** |
+| 2026-08-30 | 22 | 1 | **96 %** |
+| 2026-08-31 | 5 | 0 | **100 %** |
+
+⚠️ **And the obvious caveat, which weakens it as evidence of a habit:** the
+improvement coincides with this exchange, so the norm becoming salient is part of
+what produced the trend. It is not evidence of a durable practice — only that the
+uncited residue is old.
+
+📌 **The distinction that matters is what each mechanism implies.** Theirs is
+**generative**: a blind spot correlated with quality keeps producing new instances,
+because the well-evidenced claim never declares itself. Mine is a **legacy
+residue** — finite, concentrated in the oldest deliveries, and closable by a
+one-time backfill. **Same symptom, different prognosis**, and reading their
+diagnosis onto my corpus would have implied work that is not needed and missed work
+that is.