Matched-control study: insufficient evidence after native-access stop

Matched-control study: insufficient evidence after native-access stop

Terminal outcome, 11 October 2026: the registered comparison could not be measured because suitable controls were not established. This is insufficient evidence, not a measured zero excess, a precise null, a deficit, or evidence that hidden protostars are absent. No infrared occurrence difference or follow-up candidate list was produced. The unit stops under its prospective transport rule; it has no automatically authorized retry or successor.

What was frozen and what passed

Registration ab969cc3 fixes the cached nearby Hi-GAL catalogue-prestellar parent (19,328 exact designations), buffered MIPSGAL domain (10,136), deterministic 1,000-clump draw, 15-arcsecond apertures, 24 possible controls, column/profile/ uncertainty/completeness/crowding tolerances, spatial-bootstrap uncertainty, missingness rules and positive/precise-null/insufficient-evidence decisions. These preceded new column pixels and source rows. The CAR-format amendment 33831cba changed no statistical rule and preserved the TAN-only stopped worker.

The necessary central-column gate passed: 941/1,000 targets had a geometrically eligible control within 0.15 dex central column, representing 12,676 possible pairs. An independent raw-byte and Cartesian-geometry replay verified all 25,000 requested centres, 65 native tiles and 21,309 unique native column pixels. This establishes one input-feasibility gate, not matched controls or a scientific excess.

Why the registered study stopped

The profile worker 1286eff2 first stopped before any new HTTP request because a NumPy byte index could not be serialized to JSON. Its zero-request journal and original readout remain immutable. The explicitly registered correction 81ca0933 converted native indices to Python integers and carried forward the entire earlier acquisition budget. Tests included an independent FITS-byte fixture using NumPy indices; the correction changed no measurement or decision.

The corrected worker’s first profile-pixel request asked for 100 exact four-byte ranges in the native l000_cdens.fits. The server returned HTTP 200, with the whole 8,297,280-byte image declared, rather than HTTP 206 partial ranges. Its resource validator still matched the cached image. The worker refused the body before reading any bytes and stopped. There was one failed new request, zero received new body bytes, and no retry. No full image was downloaded. The saved headers establish the failure; its underlying server cause is not inferred.

Independent verification checked that request against the first 100 outstanding ranges reconstructed from the frozen sample, native FITS layout and separate sky rotations. It verified zero failed-body bytes, the version validator, all prior hashes and the absence of a second request. A separate offline audit then reconstructed the 177,021 requested profile points around 13,617 relevant centres: 163,323 points lack cached native bytes, and zero centres have all thirteen valid cached column values. Therefore no complete profile match can be certified from the retained inputs. No twelve-bin uncertainty, sensitivity, crowding, balance or central-sensitivity gate was completed. All 1,000 requested identities remain in cached_profile_support_at_stop.csv; final control support is unknown.

Inference and deliverables

Neither arm’s compact-source outcome was opened. The paired difference and its spatial-bootstrap interval are unmeasured. All 1,000 paired differences are unknown, so the registered unrestricted missingness bounds are [-100,+100] percentage points. These are logical worst-case bounds, not a sampling interval or an estimated effect. The supported-positive condition was not met; consequently the condition for producing up to twenty source-specific follow-up candidates was not met. No stars, stellar births, physical lifetimes or detector performance were established. The historical E15 enrichment and reviewed failures stand.

The outcome is a reproducible input-support failure of this bounded study, not an astronomical finding of no hidden activity. Finishing the unit with an honest insufficient-evidence outcome does not achieve the long-term birth-detector goal. Any future study requires a separately accepted, prospectively frozen plan; do not silently change ranges, acquisition route, sample or thresholds to pursue this stopped comparison.

Exact evidence and verification

Replay offline with one numerical thread:

OPENBLAS_NUM_THREADS=1 OMP_NUM_THREADS=1 .venv/bin/python research/verify_matched_control_profiles.py

The final acquisition use is 310 cumulative requests, 2,319,232 body bytes and 31.5284 seconds. Scientific-stage files total approximately 6 MiB, including preserved journals; free disk remains approximately 51 GiB. Full raw databases remain local and ignored with complete hashes; no external backup is asserted. Additive Git snapshots preserve registration, implementation, corrections and verified stopping evidence. No archived experiment or restricted Atlas action was resumed.