Protocol
Design and Defend an Original Experiment
Produce one original, bounded empirical finding in a chosen specialization. Entry additionally requires that branch’s complete evidence gate and an annotated map of at least 15 relevant primary papers.
80–140 active hours60–90 min sessionsAdvanced
Mastery contract
Core protocol · Standard 1.0 · Produce one original, bounded empirical finding in a chosen specialization. Entry additionally requires that branch’s complete evidence gate and an annotated map of at least 15 relevant primary papers.
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Reasoning — not yet passed
The question identifies a documented gap and a refuting outcome; a selected specialization gate must already have passed.
Reliable implementation — not yet passed
The isolated change is reproducible and traceable to a pre-result hypothesis/configuration record.
Reproducible experiment — not yet passed
Compare the isolated change against the strongest feasible baseline under declared budgets and repeated seeds; retain uncertainty, negative/null results and separate confirmatory from exploratory runs.
Defense and handoff — not yet passed
Submit a 6–10 page research-style report for external criticism, record the response and revise one claim or experiment based on substantive feedback.
All four criteria must pass. Activity completion does not satisfy them.
An independent reviewer reruns your work and varies something you did not rehearse: a fresh input, a different working directory, or a declared edge case.
Pilot decisions are provisional, not external credentials. For an appeal or sensitive artifact, contact your designated pilot operator with the submission ID. Export your assessment history.
What you will do
6 total
Write one falsifiable hypothesis from a contradiction between at least 2 papers; derive the prediction and state what evidence would refute it.
Extend the replication code with one isolated change; preregister data, search budget, seeds, measurements and a stopping rule before running it.
Run the planned baseline and extension plus 2 ablations; quantify uncertainty and document deviations separately from confirmatory results.
Debug a reviewer-proposed alternative explanation by adding a targeted control, not by widening the headline claim.
Write a 500–900 word technical report linking the reasoning, code, measurements, and limitations; include the project decision below.
Assess all 4 mastery criteria against saved artifacts, request an independent review, and repeat each failed criterion on a fresh example.
Essentials
A reading session alone never satisfies a mastery criterion.
Store source references, assumptions, and artifact paths beside every result.
Keep an untouched check case that differs from the worked example.
Record all attempts, including failures and results that contradict your prediction.
Use the stated comparison conditions; document every deviation before drawing a conclusion.
Protocol guardrails
Do
- +State the expected result before running the comparison.
- +Keep one minimal reproducible failing case when debugging.
- +Record environment versions and the exact command used.
- +Compare explanations with saved intermediate values.
- +Ask a reviewer to challenge the weakest assumption.
Don't
- ×Do not copy a worked solution and present it as an independent implementation.
- ×Do not tune against held-out evaluation outcomes.
- ×Do not report only the best seed or discard inconvenient runs.
- ×Do not equate elapsed hours or a completed run with a passed assessment.
- ×Do not conceal reduced-scale experiments behind claims about the original full-scale result.
Protocol authorship
Written by NuthinButta as instructional design. The teaching sources are the official references linked in each milestone; the exercises, workload and pass thresholds are ours, not their authors'.