Give every condition its value line, then bound it

The spine

For every condition the task names — every scenario, arm, dose, cohort, model, regime — the report carries one line of this shape:

condition: value [interval] vs reference value, gap

Including conditions you could only reach by derivation, interpolation or borrowing. A derived condition gets its line with the derivation named in the same clause. It does not get a footnote in place of a number.

Then, in its own sentence, the relation across conditions, stated as a result: the ordering, the monotonicity, the crossing — whichever relation the task's comparison is about. Over all the conditions the task named, not the subset your claim structure happened to scope.

This is where runs holding correct numbers lose. The results file has the values in the right relation; the preregistration scoped the ordering claim to a subset because one condition arrived late or by derivation; and the report never states the full relation anywhere. The relation is a separate result from the values, and having the values on disk is not stating it. A condition your hypothesis excluded is still a condition the task asked about.

reproduce-then-extend owns the shape of the published-versus-ours table these lines live in. Do not restate it; fill it.

Two results with two different subjects

Building a no-signal null against your own criterion — permuting the labels that carry the contrast, an unforced control run, a placebo condition, a within-population split — is right, and most runs never do it. Then it comes back saying your headline sits inside it, and the run has to decide what that means.

It means two things, and the loss is in fusing them.

• The estimate. "Under condition C, X% of the population falls in the high class, interval [l, u], against a published Y%." Subject: the world.
• The bound. "At this sample size, window length and threshold, the same criterion returns Z ± s from labels carrying no signal." Subject: your instrument.

The bound does not delete the estimate. It says how much of the estimate is attributable to signal. Fuse them and you publish a verdict where the task asked for a quantity, and a reader looking for the number finds a non-result.

At analysis

1. Keep the two in separate artifacts with separate decision rules. The null's verdict never overwrites the estimate's field.
2. Choose the null that matches the claim, and say why. Where the field has a standard no-signal instrument — an unforced control run, a scrambled decoy set, a permutation over a held-out population — prefer it to one you invented. A permutation within the same sample confounds internal variability with the effect and is the widest, least informative null available.
3. Calibrate it before believing it. Run it on a case known to carry signal. A null that also swallows that case is measuring its own width, and that is a finding about your criterion rather than about your result.
4. Express it as a quantity in the headline's units: the false-positive floor, the configuration that produced it, and — if one more run is affordable — the sample size, window or threshold at which the result would clear. A floor with a number is a contribution. "Not significant" is a label.
5. Name the construction feature that produces the floor: a ratio threshold at small counts, a floor near the quantisation step, a fixed denominator. Show the sweep, so a reader can tell whether the floor belongs to your reconstruction or to the published method.
6. Separate "no power to detect" from "no effect". They imply opposite next actions. State which one your evidence supports, and what would distinguish them.

At writing: the order inside the sentence

The bound is not banned from the abstract, the title or the conclusion. A run can lead with its noise floor and still read as having answered — provided that everywhere the reader meets the quantity, the requested value comes first in the sentence and the bound comes second, in the same sentence. Estimate, then bound. Never bound alone.

What loses is the reverse order, and substitution:

• a sentence whose subject is the verdict and whose object is the value;
• a verdict standing where the value should be, with the value deferred;
• the caveat re-attached to quantities the null was never computed for.

The third is a correctness problem, not a matter of tone. A bound is computed for specific quantities under a specific configuration. Restating it over a regional breakdown, a downstream comparison or a secondary arm that never entered the null asserts something you did not measure. Attach it where it was computed; elsewhere, cross-reference it.

If the null is the most interesting thing the run found, it is an additional result. The conclusion still opens with what the task asked for.

The checks

• One value line per condition the task names. A missing line is a missing result, and a caveat does not substitute for it.
• The relation across conditions is written as a sentence, early, and covers every condition — including the derived ones.
• Read the first results sentence of the abstract. Is the first quantity in it the one the task asked for, or is it a p-value or an interpolation error?
• Grep for the bound's label. Every occurrence outside its own section is either a cross-reference or a quantity the null was actually computed for.