The Second Reading

What 150 theories of Alzheimer's disease look like when you grade the evidence instead of the idea

Abstract

In 2020 the Oskar Fischer Prize invited anyone to explain the cause of Alzheimer's disease. About a hundred and fifty people answered — laboratory heads and clinicians, retired engineers and lay theorists — and eleven were given prizes. This paper reports a second reading of every submission, conducted in 2026 under a rubric fixed in advance, with each entry read end to end by two independent assessors who saw neither the prize verdicts nor any earlier scoring.

The rubric grades one thing: how well founded a claim is, given the kind of claim it is. It asks whether the evidence matches the claim type, how far that evidence has travelled toward human confirmation at the weakest necessary link, who has confirmed it, whether a falsifier exists and an instrument could return it, what fraction of the disease is claimed, at what grain the mechanism is specified, and whether the therapeutic implication rests on the layer the evidence supports.

Three results are worth the field's attention.

Seventy-seven of a hundred and fifty submissions assert temporal priority — that their mechanism happens first and the rest follows. Almost none carries the human tissue sampled at the relevant stage that such a claim requires. One hundred and thirty of a hundred and forty-five entries rest their load-bearing joint on an animal model or weaker. Exactly one reaches population-scale human evidence at the joint its conclusion depends on.

Citation integrity fails in ways ordinary review does not catch. Twenty entries carry a source that contradicts or fails to support the claim attached to it. Two entries omit decisive, independently published non-replications of their own keystone results — a defect invisible to any audit of the references an author chose to include. One rests on a paper retracted after submission. Two reproduce other authors' abstracts verbatim, first person retained.

What an entrant submitted is a weak proxy for what their science supports. Programme grades, assessed independently against the 2020–2026 literature, correlate with submission grades at r = +0.48. Only twenty-two of seventy-eight submissions fairly represent the programme behind them. Forty-eight per cent of entrants have no findable research programme at all.

The 2022 jury selected well above chance. Its winners sit eleven points above the untiered field, a gap that exceeds this instrument's resolution. But none of its ten reaches the top thirteen of this ranking, and the highest-scoring submission in the field argues against the framework that commissioned this reading.


I. Why read them twice

A prize is a judgement made once, under time pressure, by people who cannot read everything. That is not a criticism; it is the condition of every prize. But it means the archive a prize leaves behind — in this case four hundred and thirty-nine documents from a hundred and fifty people — contains more than the verdict extracted from it.

Six years have passed. Predictions made in 2020 can now be checked against what happened. Trials named as tests have reported or failed to. Claims described as confirmed can be traced to whether the confirming laboratory shared an author list. That is the opportunity a second reading exploits, and it is available to a re-reader and was not available to the jury.

This reading grades evidential standing, not importance and not originality. A well-sourced literature review can outscore an original hypothesis here, and does. That is a property of the instrument, stated plainly rather than corrected, because the alternative — folding novelty into the score — is what makes evaluation frameworks unfalsifiable.

II. Method

The rubric was fixed before any entry was read, and not edited afterwards. It has one classification gate and seven axes.

The gate asks what kind of claim is being made — initiation, convergence, function, therapeutic, or reframing — because each is adjudicated by different evidence. An initiation claim needs human tissue sampled at the relevant stage. A convergence claim needs bidirectional intervention. A function claim needs loss-of-function physiology in the normal animal. Grading one by the standards of another is a category error, and it is the most common single error in this literature.

Three axes then grade the evidence — fit (does the evidence support the kind of claim made), maturity (how far the weakest necessary link has travelled toward human confirmation), independence (who has confirmed it). Three grade the theory — refutability (is there a falsifier, and could an instrument return it), coverage (what fraction is claimed, and is more claimed than covered), resolution (at what grain the entry's own mechanism is specified). One grades the consequence — reachability — and is reported beside the composite, never inside it.

Two mandatory fields are written before the verdict: what would refute this, and where is it weakest. Falsifiers written after a result are worthless.

Blinding. Assessors saw the submission PDFs and nothing else — no prize tier, no prior score, no expert review. Author identity is not concealable, since entrants cite their own work, and the method does not claim otherwise; what blinding protects is the anchor that would contaminate a re-grade.

Two assessors per entry. Every entry was read twice, independently, and the reported score is the mean.

III. What the instrument can bear

measure value
mean disagreement between assessors 5.2 points
exact agreement 51 / 150
within 5 points 98 / 150
claim-type agreement 89%
standard error of the reported score ±3.2

Ordering reliability, which is what licenses a ranking at all:

gap between two entries ordered identically by both assessors
≥ 15 points 100%
10–15 points 95%
5–10 points 74%
< 5 points 20%

A gap of ten points or more is a real difference. A gap under five is a tie. Ranks are reported with that resolution attached. A leaderboard numbered 1 to 149 asserts some eleven thousand pairwise orderings, and only those separated by ten points or more survive re-reading.

The single grading pass that preceded this one showed a mean disagreement of about nine points on a sample deliberately spanning the score range. Doubling the assessors moved reliable ordering from roughly twenty points to ten, which is the return on the second reading and the reason it was done.

IV. What the field looks like

The claim-type result

claim type n
initiation 77
reframing 25
therapeutic 22
convergence 17
function 4

Slightly over half the field asserts that its mechanism comes first. Temporal priority in a disease with a two-decade preclinical phase is adjudicated by human tissue sampled at stages that are largely inaccessible — which is why so many initiation claims can coexist, and why so few can be settled.

This is not a new observation, but it has not before been counted across an unselected corpus of this size, by assessors who were not told to look for it.

The maturity result

load-bearing joint n
M5 — in vitro or inference 80
M4 — animal model 50
M3 — human, case level 5
M2 — human, single cohort 9
M1 — human, replicated 1

Graded at the weakest necessary link rather than the strongest available row, one hundred and thirty of a hundred and forty-five entries rest on an animal model or weaker. One reaches replicated human evidence at the joint its conclusion depends on.

This is a fact about what the field could offer in 2020, not about these entrants' competence. It is also the strongest argument for grading at the weakest link: measured at the strongest row, most of these entries would look far better evidenced than they are.

The resolution result

Across a sub-sample examined specifically for this, not one entry reaches residue-level specification on a claim it derives itself. Several carry residue-level vocabulary; in every case the detail is inherited from textbook biology or another laboratory's work and would remain true if the entry's thesis were false. The finest grain any entry earns is a named molecule plus a direction of effect.

V. Citation integrity

Assessors verified load-bearing references against PubMed rather than accepting them. The defects sort into six kinds, and only the first is caught by ordinary review.

Present but wrong. Twenty entries cite a source that contradicts or does not support the claim it carries. A paper reporting that a protein was unaffected cited as evidence it was reduced. A trial in cognitively normal volunteers with a biomarker endpoint described as demonstrating efficacy in Alzheimer's disease. A study of one cell type's axonal arbor attached to a different cell type. A paper whose title states its effect is independent of the pathway it is cited to support.

Present but transferred. Whole reference blocks lifted from other manuscripts. One entry's in-text numbers correspond to nothing in its own bibliography; its first twenty-three references form a contiguous run characteristic of another review's reference list, OCR artefacts included. Another's hyperlinks point at anchor fragments inside three other reviews.

Present but self-cited. Confirmations presented as independent that share an author list. In one case, three papers offered as showing a phenomenon "has since been confirmed by other researchers" all share the entrant's consortium — while the one genuinely independent attempt, which reports failure by four methods, is not cited.

Absent but decisive. The class no citation audit can find, because the offending reference is missing rather than wrong. Two entries omit published non-replications that name and target their keystone results. In one, four pharmaceutical companies across five models with the same antibody isotype found no effect and concluded the animal data did not support further evaluation; the submission neither cites nor rebuts it. A first-in-human trial has since reported no efficacy signal. In the other, two independent failures to reproduce the founding detection are absent from a hundred-and-three-item bibliography.

Fabricated. One reference has no record anywhere. One author name was generated by a citation parser misreading a study's title as a person.

Uncredited reproduction. At least four entries reproduce published material verbatim without attribution, including two that paste other authors' abstracts with the first person retained — text claiming our sample about cohorts the entrant had no part in.

One entry rests on a paper retracted after the submission date. It is recorded and not counted against the entrant, who could not have known.

VI. What the submission does not tell you

Every entrant's research programme was assessed separately against the 2020–2026 literature: what the laboratory work supports independent of its framing, which 2020 commitments have since been tested, and where the programme is weakest now.

measure value
entrants with no findable research programme 72 / 150 (48%)
correlation, submission vs programme r = +0.48
submissions fairly representing their programme 22 / 78

Roughly three-quarters of the variance in what an entrant's science supports is not captured by what they submitted. Thirty-one programmes had moved on from the submitted claim; ten submissions captured a fragment; eight described work the entrant does not do; five claims had been abandoned by their own authors.

The most consequential cases run in both directions. A first-rank autophagy programme was withheld in favour of a methodology argument. A submission arguing a two-hit genetic architecture came from a laboratory that never tested it and whose own therapeutic programme presupposes it false. Conversely, several strong submissions rest on programmes that have since weakened.

A hypothesis about the format. A competition that asks for the cause of Alzheimer's disease may systematically elicit an entrant's boldest idea rather than their best-evidenced one — and then grade the boldness. On that reading the field's strongest work is structurally absent from the contest. This is a criticism of the format, not of the people who entered it, and it is offered as a hypothesis rather than a finding.

VII. Six years of answers

Predictions made in 2020 can now be checked, and this is the part of the exercise unavailable to any jury.

Three hard disconfirmations arrived between 2021 and 2026, and all three landed on entries that scored well because they were testable. An antiviral trial in seropositive patients found greater cognitive worsening on treatment than placebo. A protease inhibitor missed its primary endpoints. A hormone regimen tested at nearly the proposed timing found no cognitive benefit. In each case the programme responded with subgroup or stratification rescues rather than retraction.

Two entrants ran their own falsifiers and published the losses. One reported a meta-analysis finding little evidence for the association his own submission proposed. One ran a trial in which his intervention engaged its target and accelerated decline. Both sit at mid-ranking composites, indistinguishable by score from entries that omitted decisive non-replications. This is the most creditable behaviour the reading found, and the rubric has no way to reward it.

A distinct failure: the stated falsifier converted into silence. One entrant named a specific trial as the test of his claim; six years on it has reported no efficacy result. Another wrote two falsifiers himself; his substantial programme went to heart, muscle, bone and marrow, never to brain. The claim was not abandoned — the test was specified, begun, and never reported.

And the instrument is blind to being right early. Three times a weakly-graded entrant made the call the record went on to confirm — one with no research programme at all correctly anticipating a delivery technique later demonstrated in humans; one graded low on coverage predicting a therapeutic direction since vindicated at trial scale; one whose prediction was tested twice in humans and held. Evidential standing in 2020 was a poor predictor of who turned out right. That is a finding about the field, not a defect to repair.

VIII. The 2022 verdict, measured

median
prize winners (n=10) 52.9
untiered entrants (n=139) 41.6

The jury selected well above chance. Eleven points separates its winners from the rest of the field, and eleven points exceeds this instrument's resolution. Whatever the jury was tracking, it was real.

But none of its ten winners reaches the top thirteen of this ranking. The highest-placed sits fourteenth; one gold medallist ranks a hundred and sixth of a hundred and forty-nine. The three highest-scoring submissions were all untiered.

The reading does not conclude the jury was wrong. A prize for the best idea about the cause of a disease and an assessment of evidential standing as submitted are different questions, and the eleven-point gap shows both track something real. What can be said is narrower and firmer: the entries with the strongest evidence were not, in the main, the entries that won.

That sentence turned out to be a statement about the instrument as much as about the jury. A third scoring was subsequently built to ask the prize's own question — was the hypothesis new, was it well made at the time, does it hand the field something to build on — and the jury's standing under it is very different:

2022 tier n mean rank, evidential standing mean rank, prize question
gold 4 44.0 18.8
silver 2 47.5 19.0
bronze 4 49.2 42.5
untiered 139 75.9 78.1

Gold and silver medallists sit around rank 20 of 149 when the criterion is novelty and usability, against 44–48 when it is evidential standing. The untiered field does not move at all. The jury was tracking something the evidential instrument cannot see, and it is close to what the prize said it was for. The gold medallist ranked a hundred and sixth above scores 8 of 10 on novelty, with only three entries in the field above it — though its idea remains untested six years on, and its usability score is middling. Section IX and Appendix C give the instrument and the full ordering.

IX. Three instruments

Every ranking in this paper comes from one scoring rule: the mean of an evidence half and a theory half, each axis weighted equally. That rule is defensible and it is not the only defensible one, and publishing it alone would imply a confidence in the choice that nothing here supports.

A second scoring was therefore built on a different principle and published beside the first. It weights comprehensiveness heaviest — the axis measuring what fraction of the disease an entry claims and whether it bounds its own scope — but gates that weight on whether the entry forbids something, and whether the forbidden thing was actually looked for between 2020 and 2026. A theory that explains everything and rules out nothing scores zero on this instrument however broad it is.

The gate is on forbidding rather than on internal coherence for a specific reason. A theory can be perfectly self-consistent and forbid nothing; that is the standard shape of an unfalsifiable framework rather than an incoherent one. Coherence also cannot be detected reliably by any procedure available here — an attempt to do so by pattern-matching returned false positives on roughly a third of the field. Forbidding can be detected, because a stated falsifier and a completed test are both matters of record.

The two orderings correlate at r = +0.89 and share fourteen of their top twenty. Six entries hold a top-ten place under both. Those six are the entries whose standing does not depend on which instrument a reader prefers, and that is a stronger claim than any individual rank in either table.

Several entries move by more than forty places. The most instructive sits thirteenth on the scope-gated instrument with coverage at the top anchor — and a claim that was never looked for by anyone, including its author. Comprehensiveness nobody tested is precisely what the second instrument discounts and the first does not.

The weakest component of the alternative is stated with it: whether a claim was "looked for" had to be classified from prose, and 19 per cent of entries could not be classified and were given a neutral default. The weighting itself — 0.60 on comprehensiveness — is a choice, not a measurement; at 0.50 the two orderings converge, and at 0.75 the ranking becomes largely a list of who wrote a falsifier.

The question neither instrument asked

Both scorings above grade evidential standing — how well a claim is supported. They correlate with each other at ρ = +0.91, which means running both and finding agreement was never much of a test; they ask one question with two arithmetics.

Neither asks what the prize asked. The invitation was for a novel hypothesis, rigorous at the time it was written, that gives the field something to build on. An entry can be superbly evidenced and originate nothing — a well-made restatement of a consensus position is the commonest form this takes in the field. An entry can originate a great deal and be evidenced by very little. Evidential standing is blind to both cases in opposite directions.

A third instrument was therefore built to ask the prize's question directly, frozen before any entry was read under it, and applied by graders who saw no prior score, no tier, and no other instrument's output:

core       = 0.35 x novelty_2020 + 0.30 x rigor_2020 + 0.35 x usable
scope_gate = 0.60 + 0.40 x (scope_fit / 10)
score      = scope_gate x core x 10 + 5 x vindication

Novelty was re-graded from the submissions rather than reused. A novelty column already existed from the first reading, but it correlates r = +0.53 with framework overlap and r = +0.68 with a relevancy score that was itself 88 per cent driven by that overlap. It partly measures resemblance to the assessing programme's own commitments. Reusing it would have reimported exactly the circularity this whole exercise exists to remove.

Two design choices are worth stating because they are contestable. The scope gate penalises both failure modes — an entry so broad it forbids nothing and an entry so narrow it is not a theory of the disease are both discounted, and the gate never falls below 0.60 because a good idea at the wrong scale is still an idea. The vindication term is deliberately small, five points a step on a −3 to +3 scale, because a large multiplier would collapse the instrument into a ranking by hindsight, which is the one thing a prize for a new idea explicitly was not.

The third ordering correlates ρ = +0.72 with each of the first two, against their +0.91 with each other. It is a genuinely different reading, and the sharpest single illustration is the entry that rose furthest between the two readings — from the bottom quartile to third on evidential standing, carrying the strongest human evidence base in the field — and falls to ninety-fourth here, on novelty 2 and usability 2. It restates an established position and proposes nothing. Both readings are correct about different things.

Twenty-nine per cent of the field scores zero on vindication: not contradicted, but never examined by anyone in six years. Six of those are entries scoring 7 or more on novelty — genuinely new ideas that no group has since tested in either direction. This is the instrument's own blind spot, and it was written into its limitations before it graded anything: vindication rewards claims the field chose to test, so an idea nobody funded scores zero whether or not it was any good. Each of those six is penalised five points against an otherwise identical entry that someone happened to follow up.

One structural result about the axes themselves. Rigor, usability and scope form a single tight cluster (r = +0.76 to +0.83) — close to one underlying quality of craftsmanship, which means weighting them separately hands that quality roughly two-thirds of the instrument. Novelty is the most nearly independent axis, its strongest tie to anything else being +0.65. That is the argument for including it, and the reason the first two instruments could not see what the third sees. A reasonable prior — that the field preferentially tests familiar ideas, so novelty should run against vindication — is not supported: the pair correlates at +0.27, the weakest in the matrix, but positive.

Two cautions on reading the third ordering. It is single-graded, where the composite carries two independent assessors and a stated ±3.2, so its ranks are correspondingly softer. And the novelty axis has no truth gate: entries proposing physically impossible mechanisms score 5 or 6 for originating a claim, and one scores 6 for a hypothesis that a mite causes dementia. The formula handles this, because rigor and usability then collapse the total to the bottom of the table. But the novelty column alone must never be read as a quality ranking.

The purpose of publishing all three is narrow. A single ranking invites a reader to treat the ordering as a property of the submissions. It is partly a property of the instrument, and the honest presentation is to show how much. The strongest evidence that the difference is real is that the 2022 jury looks mediocre under the two instruments that grade evidence and defensible under the one that grades ideas.

X. Limitations

The scores are means of two readers. They carry ±3.2, and gaps below ten points are not interpretable. Every number in this paper should be read with that attached.

Three axes are underspecified, and it shows. independence asks who has confirmed a claim without defining whether it means the evidence base or the claim itself; six assessors resolved it four incompatible ways. It reads high for consensus reviews that originate nothing, for claims their authors abandoned while others worked nearby, and for confirmations that do not discriminate between rival mechanisms. fit bundles distance-from-evidence with candour, so an entry that overreaches and admits it scores identically to one that overreaches silently. maturity has no quality floor at its human-case-level anchor, so unverified recollection outranks a well-designed animal study.

reachability did not discriminate. One hundred and five of a hundred and fifty entries sit on a single anchor. It is reported as a description of the field — therapeutic implications overwhelmingly rest on the animal layer — and excluded from any claim that the reading distinguished entries on it.

resolution cannot separate "proposes no mechanism" from "proposes a vague one." Reframing and taxonomic entries are the systematic casualties.

Cross-entry patterns are invisible by construction. Assessors worked in batches assigned arbitrarily. Two entries were found to share an uncredited source packet, and one entrant was found to have published the systematic review that refutes another entrant's thesis — both only because chance placed them with the same reader. Nothing in the method looks for such patterns, so their true frequency is unknown.

Four submissions were incomplete as archived — one missing its first pages, one missing its figures, one with bibliography and figure files transposed, and one folder containing the competition rules document in place of any submission. That entry is excluded rather than scored, since a missing submission is not a bad one.

The programme assessment is the softer of the two. It rests on a literature search rather than a document that can be read in full, and it is labelled as such wherever it appears.

One submission's appendix contains identifying medical records and photographs of living private individuals. Nothing derived from it is quoted or described here.

XI. What this was for

The reading produced a ranking, and the ranking is the least durable thing in it. Scores carry ±3.2 and will move if anyone reads these documents again.

What should survive is narrower. A rubric fixed before the first entry, published with its own defects named. A measured resolution, so that readers know which differences to believe. A citation register in which every defect was verified against the primary source rather than asserted — and which reproduces almost perfectly across independent readers, unlike the scores, because a paper either says what it is cited for or does not.

And one asymmetry worth carrying forward: judgements about evidence quality carry real reader variance and need averaging; facts about whether a citation supports its claim do not. The two classes of finding deserve different confidence, and presenting them at the same confidence — as most evaluation exercises do — overstates one and wastes the other.



Appendix A — the composite ranking

All 149 gradable submissions, ordered by the mean of two independent assessors.

Read with the resolution attached. Every score carries ±3.2. A gap of 10 points or more is a real difference; a gap under 5 is a tie. Adjacent ranks are not meaningful. ev and th are the evidence and theory sub-scores, reported separately because a single composite hides the diagnostic they exist to show.

prog is the entrant's research programme as it stands in 2026, assessed separately against the literature and the softer of the two grades. means no findable programme (72 of 150).

div — how the submission relates to that programme: algn fairly represents it · evol programme moved on · part captured a fragment · mism programme is about something else · dorm claim abandoned by its author · gap programme is broader.

claiminit initiation · conv convergence · func function · ther therapeutic · refr reframing.

rel — a non-scoring lens: whether the entry supports, CONtradicts, is mixed on, or is silent about the architecture of the programme that commissioned this reading. Contradiction was inadmissible as a demerit. 2022 marks the gold, silver and bronze awards.

# entrant score ev th prog div claim rel 2022
1 Todd Golde 86.7 93.3 80.0 83.3 algn init mix
2 David Rubinsztein 80.0 93.3 66.7 66.7 mism refr mix
3 Pavel Kalvach 75.0 90.0 60.0 dorm refr mix
4 Colin Masters 71.7 83.3 60.0 75.0 algn init CON
5 Jamie Walker 70.8 56.7 85.0 88.3 algn refr mix
6 Erwin Roggen 69.2 58.4 80.0 61.7 algn refr sup
7 Ruth Itzhaki 69.2 66.7 71.7 61.7 algn init mix
8 Daniel Michaelson 69.2 58.4 80.0 73.3 dorm ther mix
9 Lary Walker 66.7 66.7 66.7 71.7 evol init CON
10 Katarzyna Grochowska 66.7 66.7 66.7 58.3 part init sup
11 Jin Xu 65.0 66.7 63.4 73.3 algn conv sup
12 Paul Ewald 64.2 58.4 70.0 46.7 gap init mix
13 Jian-Sheng Kang 64.2 61.7 66.7 50.0 evol ther sup
14 Bess Frost 63.3 60.0 66.7 78.3 algn conv sup G
15 Philip De Jager 62.5 75.0 50.0 90.0 part refr mix
16 Pamela Maher 62.5 58.4 66.7 66.7 evol conv sup
17 Anne Eckert 61.7 50.0 73.3 45.0 evol init mix
18 Estela Area-Gomez 60.0 41.6 78.3 58.3 evol conv mix G
19 David Gate 60.0 66.7 53.4 71.7 evol init mix
20 Russell Swerdlow 60.0 50.0 70.0 70.0 algn init mix B
21 Chi U Seak 59.1 71.7 46.7 dorm refr sil
22 Amy Nelson 59.1 66.7 51.6 58.3 evol init mix
23 Ashley Bush 58.3 40.0 76.7 76.7 evol conv mix
24 Fernando Frassetto 58.3 66.7 50.0 mism conv mix
25 Andrew Pieper 57.5 58.4 56.7 53.3 part init sup
26 Charles Greenblatt 57.5 56.7 58.4 76.7 evol ther mix
27 Dennis N Crouse 56.7 56.7 56.7 dorm init mix
28 Cristina Quigley 56.7 56.7 56.7 75.0 part init sup
29 Varghese John 56.6 40.0 73.3 63.3 algn ther sup B
30 Christopher Ramsden 55.9 33.3 78.3 61.7 part init sup
31 Eduardo Chini 55.8 50.0 61.7 61.7 gap init sup
32 Hanno Roder 55.8 45.0 66.7 58.3 part conv mix
33 Michal Schwartz 55.8 45.0 66.7 58.3 evol ther mix
34 Gerd Kempermann 55.8 45.0 66.7 51.7 evol refr mix
35 Brenda Aske 55.0 40.0 70.0 gap init sup
36 Zhen Huang 54.1 46.6 61.7 53.3 algn func mix
37 Aleksandra Deczkows. 54.1 58.4 50.0 61.7 evol refr sup
38 Paul Cox 53.3 40.0 66.7 65.0 algn init mix
39 Brian Head 53.3 40.0 66.7 58.3 evol ther sup
40 Karl Herrup 53.3 40.0 66.7 88.3 algn init mix
41 Ralph Nixon 53.3 50.0 56.7 53.3 algn init mix G
42 Maritza Quintero 53.3 45.0 61.7 dorm init sup
43 Stephen Dominy 53.3 40.0 66.7 51.7 evol init mix
44 Donald Weaver 52.5 38.3 66.7 36.7 algn conv mix S
45 Martin Zhang 50.9 65.0 36.7 56.7 mism refr mix
46 Mishauri Nolan 50.9 55.0 46.6 dorm ther sup
47 Swananda Marathe 50.0 43.3 56.7 48.3 evol conv sup
48 Jerold Chun 50.0 33.3 66.7 66.7 algn init mix
49 Maxim Shokhirev 49.1 58.4 40.0 46.7 evol refr mix
50 Christoph Methfessel 48.4 33.3 63.4 dorm init mix
51 Günter Höglinger 48.3 30.0 66.7 53.3 evol init sup
52 Bernd Moosmann 48.3 40.0 56.7 60.0 dorm conv CON S
53 Susan Greenfield 48.3 35.0 61.7 48.3 algn conv sup
54 Li-Huei Tsai 47.5 40.0 55.0 66.7 algn conv mix
55 Zaven Khachaturian 47.5 58.4 36.6 dorm conv sup
56 Gorazd Bernard Stok. 46.7 48.4 45.0 43.3 evol init mix
57 Allan Farber 46.6 41.6 51.6 dorm init sup
58 Simon Lee 45.9 41.6 50.0 init mix
59 Amanda Alix 45.9 45.0 46.6 algn init mix
60 Alan Snow 45.8 35.0 56.7 dorm init mix
61 Brian Balin 45.8 30.0 61.7 61.7 evol init sup
62 Lauren MacIntyre 45.0 33.3 56.7 dorm func mix
63 Rajagopal Sekhar 44.1 35.0 53.4 56.7 part init sup
64 Jesus Avila 44.1 36.6 51.6 53.3 evol conv sup
65 Rafael Rodríguez-P. 44.1 31.6 56.7 48.3 evol init mix
66 Grace Lightfoot 42.5 45.0 40.0 dorm init sup
67 Annalise Barron 42.5 23.3 61.7 40.0 evol init mix B
68 Dan Pulsipher 42.5 31.6 53.4 ther sup
69 Sarthak Dua 42.5 31.6 53.4 dorm ther sil
70 Boris Decourt 41.7 56.7 26.7 36.7 evol conv sup
71 Philip Serwer 41.7 16.7 66.7 50.0 mism init mix
72 Hermona Soreq 41.7 21.7 61.7 58.3 evol init sil
73 Soghra Bagheri 41.7 33.3 50.0 40.0 evol init sup
74 Patrizia Mecocci 41.7 23.3 60.0 40.0 evol conv sup
75 Prashant Joshi 41.6 36.6 46.7 dorm refr mix
76 Stanley Prusiner 41.6 26.6 56.7 70.0 part ther mix
77 Roger Rosenberg 41.6 33.3 50.0 58.3 mism init sup
78 Carina Clawson 41.6 45.0 38.4 dorm refr sup
79 Simone Hasselmo 40.9 28.3 53.4 dorm init mix
80 Ishwari Chandran Iy. 40.9 45.0 36.7 gap conv mix
81 Bindu Paul 40.0 40.0 40.0 63.3 algn conv sup
82 Leandro Bergantin 40.0 23.3 56.7 23.3 mism ther sup
83 Walter Lukiw 40.0 23.3 56.7 46.7 evol init sup
84 Gunnar Gouras 39.2 40.0 38.3 48.3 algn init sup B
85 Dharmendra Lingaiah 39.2 40.0 38.3 dorm init mix
86 Stacey Gorniak 39.1 38.3 40.0 60.0 mism init sup
87 Delphine Boche 38.4 23.3 53.4 75.0 evol init mix
88 Richelle Cutler 38.4 25.0 51.7 dorm init sup
89 Antonio Pinto-Duarte 38.4 36.6 40.0 dorm init mix
90 Parvathi Shanmugam 38.3 40.0 36.7 dorm ther mix
91 Victor Villarreal 37.5 25.0 50.0 dorm init mix
92 Ari Rappoport 37.5 33.3 41.7 35.0 algn func mix
93 Suresh Kumar 37.5 21.6 53.4 48.3 dorm ther sil
94 Ameer Shahul 35.8 25.0 46.6 dorm init CON
95 Lane Simonian 35.0 28.3 41.7 conv mix
96 Arsim Bytyqi 35.0 25.0 45.0 dorm init mix
97 Gerhard Multhaup 35.0 23.3 46.6 63.3 part refr mix
98 Nils de Mol van Ott. 35.0 23.3 46.7 43.3 algn ther sil
99 Lisa Vandegrift Dav. 35.0 20.0 50.0 dorm init sil
100 Elena Paley 34.1 26.6 41.7 43.3 mism init mix
101 Shreya Magadum 34.1 25.0 43.3 dorm init sup
102 Leonard Nelson 34.1 20.0 48.4 dorm init mix
103 Amos Gelbard 32.5 26.6 38.4 algn ther sil
104 Richard Lathe 32.5 31.6 33.3 46.7 part init CON
105 Dale Bredesen 31.7 23.3 40.0 35.0 evol conv mix
106 Carlo Abbate 30.8 23.3 38.3 25.0 evol init CON G
107 Susan Lee 30.8 18.3 43.3 dorm init CON
108 Thomas Manaugh 28.4 20.0 36.7 dorm init sil
109 Christopher Merchant 28.3 23.3 33.3 algn init mix
110 Gordon Kruberg 27.5 11.7 43.4 dorm init sup
111 Sathibalan Ponniah 27.5 11.7 43.3 dorm init mix
112 Angela Dorigatti 27.5 41.6 13.3 50.0 algn refr mix
113 Vinay Kumar Maldodd. 27.5 23.4 31.7 mism ther sil
114 Howard Friel 27.5 33.3 21.7 48.3 dorm ther mix
115 Ramin Farsheed 25.0 6.7 43.3 dorm init CON
116 Ivan Mendeleiev 25.0 6.7 43.3 mism init mix
117 Prem Saini 25.0 6.7 43.3 gap init sil
118 Sanjay Balasubraman. 23.4 6.7 40.0 dorm init sup
119 Jukka Welling 22.5 23.3 21.7 refr mix
120 Shanmugam Sankaraku. 21.7 6.7 36.7 dorm init sil
121 Raymond Lord 21.7 6.7 36.7 algn init mix
122 Kanval Saini 21.7 6.7 36.7 dorm init CON
123 Ruxandra Ana Maria . 21.6 28.3 15.0 mism init mix
124 Chelsea Castaneda 20.9 15.0 26.7 dorm refr sil
125 Claudiu Bandea 19.2 11.7 26.7 dorm refr CON
126 Shraddha Pawar 19.2 6.7 31.7 algn ther sil
127 Satej Pradhan 19.1 18.3 20.0 gap refr sup
128 T Kumar 18.4 15.0 21.7 dorm ther sil
129 Dr Geethanjali Bhas 18.3 28.3 8.3 dorm refr sup
130 Masaki Hatakeyama 15.0 6.7 23.3 18.3 mism init CON
131 Anil Kumar Kruthive. 14.2 6.7 21.7 gap init mix
132 Dongdong Kang 10.8 6.7 15.0 algn func mix
133 John Gruber 10.8 6.7 15.0 gap ther sil
134 Nicole Bishop 10.0 6.7 13.3 dorm refr sil
135 Abhishek Sawant 10.0 6.7 13.3 gap refr sil
136 E Sripriya 9.2 15.0 3.3 dorm refr sil
137 Jennifer Thornton 8.3 6.7 10.0 dorm init sil
138 Christa Dang 7.5 6.7 8.3 91.7 dorm init mix
139 Jeevan Pradhan 7.5 6.7 8.3 dorm refr sil
140 Luis Ignacio Brusco 7.5 6.7 8.3 dorm refr sil
141 Dana Varadiova 5.0 6.7 3.3 dorm init mix
142 Avnish Tiwari 5.0 6.7 3.3 dorm refr sil
143 Kaloyan Simeonov 5.0 6.7 3.3 algn init CON
144 Jibin Joy 5.0 6.7 3.3 init sil
145 T Cheluvaraju 5.0 6.7 3.3 init CON
146 Vaidhyanathan Vijay. 5.0 6.7 3.3 init sil
147 Mantu Satyam 5.0 6.7 3.3 ther sil
148 Krishna Moorthi 5.0 6.7 3.3 dorm init sil
149 Narayan Agarwal 5.0 6.7 3.3 dorm ther sil

The commissioning programme's own entry

Graded blind in the same stream under the charter's fourth rule — a rubric its author cannot lose under is not a rubric. Listed separately because it is not comparable: written in July 2026 with six years of literature the 2020 entrants could not cite, and two of its three distinctive claims depend on post-2020 papers. No axis captures that advantage. Both assessors returned identical scores on all seven axes.

entry score ev th reach would rank
this programme 58.3 50.0 66.7 20.0 23 of 150

Excluded

One submission is excluded rather than scored. The only file in its folder is the competition rules document; no submission was archived. A missing submission is not a bad submission, and floor-scoring it would misrepresent both the entrant and the denominator.



Appendix B — the scope-gated ordering

The same 149 submissions under the second instrument described in §IX: comprehensiveness weighted heaviest, gated on forbidding something that was actually looked for.

B = G x (0.60 x coverage + 0.40 x mean(fit, maturity, independence, resolution, reachability))

G = 0.00  if refutability = 0    accommodates any outcome
    0.45  if refutability <= 4   falsifier in principle, no instrument reaches it
    1.00  if refutability >= 7   falsifier stated, instrument exists

then  G = G x (0.70 + 0.30 x looked)      looked in {0, 0.5, 1}

Δ is the movement from Appendix A: positive means the entry rises under scope-gating. look records whether the 2020 claim was actually tested between 2020 and 2026 — yes, part, no, ? unclassifiable, no research programme to test it.

Read the caveats in §IX before using this table. The 0.60 weight is a choice, not a measurement; the gate never fully zeroes a testable claim; and 28 of 149 entries could not be classified on look and carry a neutral default.

# entrant gated comp Δ cov ref look 2022
1 Todd Golde 96.0 86.7 +0 10 7 yes
2 Anne Eckert 79.2 61.7 +15 10 7 yes
3 David Rubinsztein 78.9 80.0 -1 10 7 part
4 Jamie Walker 72.4 70.8 +1 10 7 ?
5 Russell Swerdlow 69.6 60.0 +13 8 7 yes B
6 Erwin Roggen 69.0 69.2 +0 10 7 ?
7 Gerd Kempermann 66.3 55.8 +24 10 7 ?
8 Estela Area-Gomez 65.2 60.0 +11 8 8 yes G
9 Colin Masters 62.6 71.7 -5 8 7 part
10 Ruth Itzhaki 61.9 69.2 -3 8 8 ?
11 Paul Ewald 60.9 64.2 +1 8 7 ?
12 Ashley Bush 58.8 58.3 +11 6 8 yes
13 Daniel Michaelson 58.0 69.2 -5 10 7 no
14 Pamela Maher 57.2 62.5 +1 6 7 yes
15 Hanno Roder 55.6 55.8 +17 6 7 yes
16 Varghese John 55.1 56.6 +13 8 7 ? B
17 Christopher Ramsden 54.7 55.9 +13 8 7 ?
18 Lary Walker 54.4 66.7 -9 6 7 ?
19 Jian-Sheng Kang 53.4 64.2 -6 6 7 part
20 Paul Cox 52.8 53.3 +18 6 7 yes
21 Brian Head 52.8 53.3 +18 6 7 yes
22 Pavel Kalvach 50.4 75.0 -19 8 7
23 Katarzyna Grochowska 49.8 66.7 -13 8 7 no
24 Bess Frost 49.0 63.3 -10 6 7 ? G
25 Jin Xu 49.0 65.0 -14 6 7 ?
26 Michal Schwartz 45.9 55.8 +7 6 7 part
27 Karl Herrup 44.9 53.3 +13 6 7 ?
28 Brenda Aske 44.8 55.0 +7 8 7
29 Günter Höglinger 42.8 48.3 +22 6 7 ?
30 Charles Greenblatt 42.8 57.5 -5 3 8 yes
31 Brian Balin 42.8 45.8 +29 6 6 ?
32 Amy Nelson 40.6 59.1 -11 4 7 ?
33 Chi U Seak 38.9 59.1 -11 6 7
34 Eduardo Chini 38.8 55.8 +0 3 8 yes
35 Nils de Mol van Ott. 38.8 35.0 +60 6 7 part
36 Zhen Huang 38.6 54.1 +0 4 7 part
37 Stephen Dominy 37.2 53.3 +4 3 7 yes
38 Christoph Methfessel 36.4 48.4 +12 6 7
39 Cristina Quigley 35.7 56.7 -12 3 7 part
40 Susan Greenfield 34.8 48.3 +12 3 7 yes
41 Andrew Pieper 34.7 57.5 -15 3 7 ?
42 Aleksandra Deczkows. 34.7 54.1 -5 3 7 part
43 Stanley Prusiner 34.5 41.6 +32 4 6 ?
44 Jesus Avila 34.5 44.1 +19 4 7 part
45 Hermona Soreq 33.5 41.7 +25 4 7 ?
46 Jerold Chun 33.2 50.0 +1 3 10 yes
47 Gerhard Multhaup 33.1 35.0 +49 4 6 ?
48 Patrizia Mecocci 33.0 41.7 +23 6 7 no
49 Philip De Jager 32.0 62.5 -33 10 4 ?
50 Prashant Joshi 31.9 41.6 +26 6 7
51 Roger Rosenberg 31.8 41.6 +26 4 8 part
52 Ralph Nixon 31.6 53.3 -10 3 7 ? G
53 Allan Farber 31.5 46.6 +4 4 7
54 David Gate 30.5 60.0 -34 3 7 no
55 Maxim Shokhirev 29.9 49.1 -6 3 7 part
56 Bernd Moosmann 29.6 48.3 -3 3 7 ? S
57 Rajagopal Sekhar 29.2 44.1 +7 3 7 part
58 Gorazd Bernard Stok. 28.6 46.7 -2 3 6 ?
59 Dennis N Crouse 28.3 56.7 -31 3 7
60 Li-Huei Tsai 28.2 47.5 -6 3 8 part
61 Rafael Rodríguez-P. 27.9 44.1 +4 3 7 ?
62 Fernando Frassetto 27.7 58.3 -38 3 7
63 Mishauri Nolan 27.4 50.9 -18 3 7
64 Maritza Quintero 27.2 53.3 -21 3 7
65 Suresh Kumar 27.0 37.5 +26 4 6 no
66 Gunnar Gouras 26.9 39.2 +18 3 6 ? B
67 Annalise Barron 26.2 42.5 -1 3 8 part B
68 Leandro Bergantin 26.2 40.0 +13 3 7 part
69 Donald Weaver 25.8 52.5 -25 3 7 no S
70 Stacey Gorniak 25.8 39.1 +16 3 7 ?
71 Swananda Marathe 24.9 50.0 -23 3 7 no
72 Philip Serwer 24.8 41.7 +0 3 10 ?
73 Amanda Alix 24.6 45.9 -15 3 7
74 Simon Lee 23.5 45.9 -15 3 7
75 Alan Snow 23.5 45.8 -14 3 7
76 Lauren MacIntyre 23.2 45.0 -14 3 7
77 Dan Pulsipher 22.4 42.5 -10 3 7
78 Sarthak Dua 22.4 42.5 -10 3 7
79 Dharmendra Lingaiah 22.1 39.2 +6 3 6
80 Simone Hasselmo 21.8 40.9 -1 3 7
81 Ishwari Chandran Iy. 21.8 40.9 -1 3 7
82 Walter Lukiw 21.6 40.0 +0 3 7 no
83 Martin Zhang 21.3 50.9 -37 6 2 part
84 Delphine Boche 21.0 38.4 +3 3 7 no
85 Parvathi Shanmugam 21.0 38.3 +5 3 7
86 Soghra Bagheri 21.0 41.7 -13 3 7 no
87 Arsim Bytyqi 20.7 35.0 +10 3 6
88 Victor Villarreal 20.7 37.5 +4 3 7
89 Leonard Nelson 20.4 34.1 +11 3 6
90 Ameer Shahul 20.2 35.8 +4 3 7
91 Lisa Vandegrift Dav. 19.9 35.0 +7 3 7
92 Shreya Magadum 19.6 34.1 +9 3 7
93 Vinay Kumar Maldodd. 19.3 27.5 +17 3 6
94 Susan Lee 18.5 30.8 +12 3 7
95 Carlo Abbate 18.2 30.8 +12 3 6 no G
96 Grace Lightfoot 17.8 42.5 -27 2 6
97 Thomas Manaugh 17.6 28.4 +11 3 7
98 Sathibalan Ponniah 17.4 27.5 +13 3 7
99 Ramin Farsheed 16.5 25.0 +16 3 7
100 Ivan Mendeleiev 16.5 25.0 +16 3 7
101 Prem Saini 16.5 25.0 +16 3 7
102 Shanmugam Sankaraku. 15.4 21.7 +18 3 7
103 Raymond Lord 15.4 21.7 +18 3 7
104 Shraddha Pawar 15.4 19.2 +21 3 6
105 Kanval Saini 15.4 21.7 +17 3 7
106 Bindu Paul 14.9 40.0 -23 3 4 yes
107 Sanjay Balasubraman. 14.8 23.4 +11 3 7
108 Boris Decourt 13.6 41.7 -34 3 4 ?
109 Amos Gelbard 13.6 32.5 -6 2 7
110 Carina Clawson 13.2 41.6 -32 4 4
111 Dale Bredesen 12.4 31.7 -6 3 4 part
112 Richard Lathe 11.9 32.5 -8 3 4 part
113 Zaven Khachaturian 11.6 47.5 -58 3 4
114 Antonio Pinto-Duarte 10.2 38.4 -26 3 4
115 Richelle Cutler 10.0 38.4 -26 3 4
116 Elena Paley 9.5 34.1 -14 0 6 no
117 Howard Friel 8.8 27.5 -5 0 6 part
118 Christopher Merchant 8.7 28.3 -9 3 4
119 Claudiu Bandea 8.3 19.2 +7 3 4
120 Gordon Kruberg 8.1 27.5 -7 3 4
121 Satej Pradhan 7.8 19.1 +6 3 2
122 Chelsea Castaneda 7.6 20.9 +2 3 4
123 Lane Simonian 7.2 35.0 -24 2 4
124 Ari Rappoport 7.1 37.5 -31 2 4 no
125 Ruxandra Ana Maria . 5.7 21.6 -2 2 2
126 Jukka Welling 5.4 22.5 -7 2 4
127 T Kumar 4.2 18.4 +1 0 6
128 Anil Kumar Kruthive. 4.1 14.2 +3 2 4
129 Masaki Hatakeyama 2.5 15.0 +1 0 4 yes
130 Christa Dang 0.0 7.5 +8 2 0 yes
131 Dana Varadiova 0.0 5.0 +10 0 0
132 Jeevan Pradhan 0.0 7.5 +7 2 0
133 Avnish Tiwari 0.0 5.0 +9 0 0
134 Luis Ignacio Brusco 0.0 7.5 +6 2 0
135 Angela Dorigatti 0.0 27.5 -21 3 0 ?
136 Jennifer Thornton 0.0 8.3 +1 0 0
137 Kaloyan Simeonov 0.0 5.0 +6 0 0
138 Nicole Bishop 0.0 10.0 -4 3 0
139 Dongdong Kang 0.0 10.8 -7 2 0
140 Jibin Joy 0.0 5.0 +4 0 0
141 T Cheluvaraju 0.0 5.0 +4 0 0
142 Vaidhyanathan Vijay. 0.0 5.0 +4 0 0
143 John Gruber 0.0 10.8 -10 2 0
144 Abhishek Sawant 0.0 10.0 -9 3 0
145 Mantu Satyam 0.0 5.0 +2 0 0
146 Krishna Moorthi 0.0 5.0 +2 0 0
147 Dr Geethanjali Bhas 0.0 18.3 -18 2 0
148 Narayan Agarwal 0.0 5.0 +1 0 0
149 E Sripriya 0.0 9.2 -13 0 0

What survives both instruments

Six entries hold a top-ten place under both scorings. Their standing does not depend on which instrument a reader prefers, which is a stronger statement than any single rank in either appendix.

entrant Appendix A Appendix B
Todd Golde 1 1
David Rubinsztein 2 3
Colin Masters 4 9
Jamie Walker 5 4
Erwin Roggen 6 6
Ruth Itzhaki 7 10

Appendix C — the prize-question ordering

The same 149 submissions under the third instrument described in §IX: was the hypothesis new in 2020, well made by the standards of 2020, and does it hand the field something specific to build on — scope-gated against both over-breadth and over-narrowness, with a modest bonus for having since been borne out.

core       = 0.35 x novelty + 0.30 x rigor + 0.35 x usable
scope_gate = 0.60 + 0.40 x (scope / 10)
C          = scope_gate x core x 10 + 5 x vindication

Δ is the movement from Appendix A: positive means the entry rises when the criterion becomes the prize's question rather than evidential standing. vin runs −3 (its intervention harmed patients) to +3 (independently confirmed at human scale); 0 means untested — nobody looked, which is 29 per cent of the field.

Read the caveats in §IX before using this table. The weights are a choice, not a measurement; rigor asks graders to un-know six years of literature and is the softest field; novelty has no truth gate, so an impossible mechanism can score well on that column alone; and unlike Appendix A this ordering is single-graded.

# entrant prize comp Δ nov rig vin use scope 2022
1 Christopher Ramsden 90.2 55.9 +29 8 8 +2 9 9
2 Zhen Huang 83.6 54.1 +34 8 8 +2 8 8
3 Bess Frost 83.1 63.3 +11 6 9 +2 9 8 gold
3 Hanno Roder 83.1 55.8 +28 7 9 +2 8 8
5 Karl Herrup 80.6 53.3 +33 9 7 +2 9 6
6 Ashley Bush 79.3 58.3 +17 8 10 -2 10 9
7 Anne Eckert 78.4 61.7 +10 4 8 +3 8 9
8 Jerold Chun 77.6 50.0 +39 8 7 +2 9 6
9 Paul Ewald 77.3 64.2 +3 7 8 +2 8 7
10 Donald Weaver 77.2 52.5 +34 7 8 +2 9 6 silver
11 Philip Serwer 75.3 41.7 +59 8 5 +2 8 8
12 Estela Area-Gomez 74.9 60.0 +6 5 9 +1 9 8 gold
12 Roger Rosenberg 74.9 41.6 +63 7 6 +2 8 8
14 Richelle Cutler 74.4 38.4 +73 7 5 +3 8 7
15 Ralph Nixon 74.3 53.3 +23 6 8 +2 9 6 gold
16 Susan Greenfield 72.8 48.3 +35 6 7 +1 10 7
17 Hermona Soreq 72.6 41.7 +53 8 5 +2 9 6
18 Pamela Maher 71.8 62.5 -3 5 9 +1 10 6
19 Andrew Pieper 71.2 57.5 +6 5 7 +2 8 8
20 Todd Golde 70.7 86.7 -19 2 10 +3 6 9
21 Annalise Barron 70.1 42.5 +45 7 6 +1 9 7 bronze
22 Li-Huei Tsai 69.3 47.5 +32 5 8 +1 10 6
23 Richard Lathe 69.2 32.5 +80 7 6 +2 8 6
23 Charles Greenblatt 69.2 57.5 +2 6 6 +2 9 6
25 Ruth Itzhaki 68.5 69.2 -19 3 9 +1 9 8
26 Michal Schwartz 68.4 55.8 +5 4 8 +2 9 6
26 Daniel Michaelson 68.4 69.2 -20 3 8 +1 9 9
28 Bernd Moosmann 68.1 48.3 +23 8 9 -1 7 8 silver
29 Erwin Roggen 67.3 69.2 -23 7 8 +0 8 7
30 Delphine Boche 66.6 38.4 +57 8 6 +1 6 8
31 Brian Head 66.2 53.3 +7 6 8 +1 9 5
31 Jamie Walker 66.2 70.8 -26 6 7 +1 7 8
31 Lary Walker 66.2 66.7 -22 2 9 +2 7 9
31 Gerd Kempermann 66.2 55.8 +0 8 8 +1 5 7
35 Maxim Shokhirev 65.6 49.1 +14 6 8 +2 7 5
36 Brian Balin 65.2 45.8 +24 4 6 +2 8 8
37 Jesus Avila 64.0 44.1 +26 6 6 +1 8 7
38 Rafael Rodriguez-Puertas 63.9 44.1 +25 7 5 +1 7 8
39 Eduardo Chini 63.8 55.8 -8 6 7 +1 8 6
39 Maritza Quintero 63.8 53.3 -1 5 5 +2 9 6
41 Paul Cox 63.5 53.3 -3 4 7 +1 9 7
42 Gunnar Gouras 63.2 39.2 +42 6 5 +2 7 7 bronze
43 David Rubinsztein 63.0 80.0 -41 7 9 +1 6 5
44 Brenda Aske 62.8 55.0 -9 5 6 +2 7 7
45 Colin Masters 61.6 71.7 -41 2 8 +3 5 9
45 Carlo Abbate 61.6 30.8 +61 8 7 +0 6 7 gold
47 Katarzyna Grochowska 60.4 66.7 -38 5 7 +2 7 5
48 Russell Swerdlow 60.0 60.0 -30 3 8 +1 8 7 bronze
49 Arsim Bytyqi 59.4 35.0 +46 8 4 +1 8 5
50 Ari Rappoport 59.0 37.5 +41 9 6 +0 5 7
51 David Gate 58.0 60.0 -33 5 6 +2 7 5
51 Cristina Quigley 58.0 56.7 -24 4 6 +2 8 5
53 Stanley Prusiner 57.8 41.6 +22 4 6 +1 8 7
54 Dale Bredesen 57.5 31.7 +51 3 6 +2 8 6
55 Stephen Dominy 57.2 53.3 -17 6 8 -2 10 6
56 Christoph Methfessel 56.3 48.4 -6 7 6 +0 7 6
57 Leonard Nelson 56.2 34.1 +43 7 5 +1 7 5
58 Walter Lukiw 55.8 40.0 +23 4 6 +1 9 5
59 Varghese John 53.3 56.6 -30 4 6 +1 9 4 bronze
60 Swananda Marathe 52.9 50.0 -13 4 7 +1 8 4
61 Simone Hasselmo 51.6 40.9 +18 3 6 +1 7 7
62 Rajagopal Sekhar 51.4 44.1 +1 5 4 +1 9 4
63 Alan Snow 50.7 45.8 -3 3 5 +2 8 4
64 Soghra Bagheri 50.6 41.7 +6 6 5 +1 6 5
65 Lauren MacIntyre 49.0 45.0 -3 9 4 +0 6 4
66 Elena Paley 48.6 34.1 +34 6 5 +0 8 4
66 Patrizia Mecocci 48.6 41.7 +4 6 5 +0 8 4
68 Allan Farber 47.0 46.6 -11 5 5 +1 5 6
69 Gerhard Multhaup 46.0 35.0 +26 4 5 +1 8 3
70 Jian-Sheng Kang 45.8 64.2 -58 5 5 -1 8 6
71 Gunter Hoglinger 45.7 48.3 -20 3 6 +1 8 3
72 Stacey Gorniak 45.4 39.1 +14 5 4 +1 6 5
73 Gordon Kruberg 44.9 27.5 +37 7 3 +1 4 6
73 Aleksandra Deczkowska 44.9 54.1 -37 4 7 +1 5 4
75 Gorazd Bernard Stokin 42.8 46.7 -19 4 5 +1 4 7
76 Raymond Lord 41.5 21.7 +44 6 2 +1 6 4
77 Antonio Pinto-Duarte 41.1 38.4 +10 5 3 +1 6 4
77 Dan Pulsipher 41.1 42.5 -11 3 3 +1 8 4
77 Susan Lee 41.1 30.8 +29 7 3 +1 4 4
80 Bindu Paul 40.8 40.0 +1 3 3 +2 6 4
81 Jin Xu 40.3 65.0 -70 3 7 +1 5 3
82 Sathibalan Ponniah 38.8 27.5 +28 5 2 +1 6 4
83 Simon Lee 37.8 45.9 -25 4 5 -1 7 5
84 Claudiu Bandea 36.4 19.2 +41 6 4 +0 5 3
85 Leandro Bergantin 35.8 40.0 -4 4 3 -1 8 5
86 Martin Zhang 33.1 50.9 -41 2 6 +1 4 3
87 Masaki Hatakeyama 33.0 15.0 +43 7 1 +0 6 2
88 Amy Nelson 32.4 59.1 -67 3 5 +1 3 4
89 Chi U Seak 31.8 59.1 -68 3 3 +1 4 5
90 Christopher Merchant 31.6 28.3 +19 3 3 +1 5 3
91 Boris Decourt 30.9 41.7 -21 2 5 +1 4 3
92 Zaven Khachaturian 28.4 47.5 -38 2 5 +1 3 3
92 Philip De Jager 28.4 62.5 -77 2 5 +1 3 3
94 Pavel Kalvach 28.2 75.0 -91 2 5 +1 2 5
95 Amos Gelbard 28.1 32.5 +8 3 2 +1 5 2
96 Fernando Frassetto 26.7 58.3 -73 1 6 +1 2 4
97 Dennis N Crouse 25.5 56.7 -70 1 3 +0 6 4
98 Mishauri Nolan 25.1 50.9 -53 2 3 +1 3 4
98 Amanda Alix 25.1 45.9 -40 2 3 +1 3 4
100 Grace Lightfoot 24.4 42.5 -34 2 2 +1 4 3
101 Ameer Shahul 24.2 35.8 -7 4 3 -1 5 3
102 Shreya Magadum 24.1 34.1 -2 2 3 +1 3 3
103 Sarthak Dua 23.2 42.5 -37 1 2 +0 6 4
104 Shanmugam Sankarakumaru 22.3 21.7 +16 3 1 +1 3 3
105 Carina Clawson 21.8 41.6 -30 2 6 +0 2 2
106 Thomas Manaugh 20.8 28.4 +2 5 2 -1 3 4
107 Lane Simonian 20.5 35.0 -12 3 2 -1 6 2
108 Jennifer Thornton 19.8 8.3 +29 6 1 +0 2 1
109 Suresh Kumar 19.7 37.5 -18 2 5 +0 2 2
110 Lisa Vandegrift Davala 19.5 35.0 -15 3 2 -1 5 3
111 Jukka Welling 19.4 22.5 +8 4 2 +0 2 3
112 Howard Friel 18.1 27.5 -2 2 2 -1 6 2
113 Sanjay Balasubramaniam 17.2 23.4 +5 2 1 +1 2 3
113 Dharmendra Lingaiah 17.2 39.2 -29 1 1 +1 3 3
115 Ramin Farsheed 16.7 25.0 +0 6 0 +0 1 2
116 Kanval Saini 16.3 21.7 +4 2 1 +0 4 2
117 John Gruber 16.1 10.8 +15 2 1 -1 6 2
118 Ivan Mendeleiev 15.8 25.0 -3 4 2 -2 4 4
119 Angela Dorigatti 15.6 27.5 -9 2 3 +0 2 2
120 Prashant Joshi 14.7 41.6 -45 2 3 +0 2 1
121 Ruxandra Ana Maria Dzubaila 13.9 21.6 +2 2 1 +0 3 2
121 Prem Saini 13.9 25.0 -6 4 1 +0 1 2
123 Victor Villarreal 13.7 37.5 -32 1 4 +0 1 3
124 Christa Dang 13.4 7.5 +14 5 0 +0 1 1
125 E Sripriya 12.9 9.2 +11 1 4 +0 1 2
126 Jibin Joy 11.7 5.0 +15 2 0 +1 1 1
127 Dana Varadiova 11.6 5.0 +14 3 1 +0 1 2
127 Dongdong Kang 11.6 10.8 +5 3 1 +0 1 2
127 T Kumar 11.6 18.4 +1 1 1 +0 3 2
130 Luis Ignacio Brusco 11.2 7.5 +8 1 2 +0 2 2
131 Dr Geethanjali Bhas 10.9 18.3 -2 1 3 +0 1 2
132 Ishwari Chandran Iyer 10.6 40.9 -53 1 3 -1 3 2
133 Nils de Mol van Otterloo 9.9 35.0 -38 1 2 +0 2 0
134 Anil Kumar Kruthiventi 9.5 14.2 -3 2 0 +0 2 2
135 Vaidhyanathan Vijayaraghavan 9.2 5.0 +6 1 1 +0 2 2
136 Nicole Bishop 8.6 10.0 -2 2 1 +0 1 1
137 Chelsea Castaneda 6.8 20.9 -13 1 1 +0 1 2
138 Abhishek Sawant 6.5 10.0 -4 1 2 +0 0 2
139 Avnish Tiwari 4.5 5.0 +2 1 0 +0 1 1
139 T Cheluvaraju 4.5 5.0 +2 1 0 +0 1 1
139 Krishna Moorthi 4.5 5.0 +2 3 0 -1 1 2
139 Narayan Agarwal 4.5 5.0 +2 1 0 +0 1 1
143 Shraddha Pawar 4.2 19.2 -18 1 1 -1 2 2
144 Parvathi Shanmugam 4.1 38.3 -54 0 2 +0 0 2
145 Jeevan Pradhan 0.0 7.5 -7 0 0 +0 0 1
145 Vinay Kumar Maldoddi Sangaiah 0.0 27.5 -35 0 0 +0 0 1
145 Satej Pradhan 0.0 19.1 -18 0 0 +0 0 1
145 Mantu Satyam 0.0 5.0 -4 0 0 +0 0 0
149 Kaloyan Simeonov -0.5 5.0 -8 2 0 -1 0 1

What survives all three instruments

5 entries hold a top-twenty place under evidential standing, under scope-gating, and under the prize question. Their standing does not depend on which of the three questions a reader thinks the prize was asking.

entrant Appendix A Appendix B Appendix C
Anne Eckert 17 2 7
Paul Ewald 12 11 9
Estela Area-Gomez 18 8 12
Pamela Maher 15 14 18
Todd Golde 1 1 20

Three defensible instruments produce three orderings. A reader who wants a single verdict is asking the field for something it cannot supply, and what can be said without naming an instrument is confined to the entries above.


Every entry was read in full by two independent assessors under the instrument of Appendix A, from which Appendix B is derived. Appendix C is a separate single-graded reading of the same 149 submissions. Grades, per-axis scores, verified citation defects and the full divergence analysis are recorded alongside this paper.

Source: research/ofp-regrade/The_Second_Reading.md