R0007/2026-03-19/C003 — Assessment¶
BLUF¶
The statistic is real (82.53% of 229 samples with heavy right tails) but comes from the 2016 Aguinis et al. paper, not a 2014 follow-up as claimed.
Probability¶
Rating: Likely (55-80%)
Confidence in assessment: Medium
Confidence rationale: The 82.53% figure and 229 samples are confirmed in connection with the "Conductors and Insulators" paper. However, the PDF of this paper could not be fully extracted, and there is a possibility the 2014 "Star Performers" paper also references this statistic as preliminary findings.
Reasoning Chain¶
- Search for "82.5% of 229 samples" consistently returns the 2016 paper "Cumulative Advantage: Conductors and Insulators of Heavy-Tailed Productivity Distributions" [SRC01-E01, High, High].
- The 2014 paper "Star Performers in Twenty-First Century Organizations" is a conceptual/review paper that discusses the implications of power-law distributions but is not primarily an empirical study with new sample analyses [SRC01-E02, High, Medium].
- The exact figure 82.53% (rounded to 82.5% in the claim) and 229 samples are consistently associated with the 2016 publication [SRC01-E01, High, High].
- JUDGMENT: The claim conflates two different follow-up papers. The statistic is real but misattributed by year.
Evidence Base Summary¶
| Source | Description | Reliability | Relevance | Key Finding |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SRC01 | Aguinis et al. (2016) | High | High | 82.53% of 229 samples confirmed |
Collection Synthesis¶
| Dimension | Assessment |
|---|---|
| Evidence quality | Medium — PDF not fully extractable |
| Source agreement | High — all references point to 2016 paper |
| Source independence | Medium — multiple databases reference same paper |
| Outliers | None |
Detail¶
The evidence consistently associates the 229-sample/82.53% statistic with the 2016 paper rather than the 2014 paper. This is a minor misattribution of year rather than a fabrication.
Gaps¶
| Missing Evidence | Impact on Assessment |
|---|---|
| Full text of 2014 paper | Cannot confirm whether it also contains this statistic |
| Full text of 2016 paper | PDF extraction failed |
Researcher Bias Check¶
Declared biases: None applicable.
Influence assessment: The researcher may have conflated the two follow-up papers in good faith.
Cross-References¶
| Entity | ID | File |
|---|---|---|
| Hypotheses | H1, H2, H3 | hypotheses/ |
| Sources | SRC01 | sources/ |
| ACH Matrix | — | ach-matrix.md |
| Self-Audit | — | self-audit.md |