C001¶


Research	R0007 — AI Cognitive Amplifier
Run	2026-03-20
Claim	C001

Claim: O'Boyle and Aguinis (2012) studied five studies, 198 samples, 633,263 individuals across researchers, entertainers, politicians, and athletes and found individual performance follows a power-law distribution, not a normal distribution. The top decile produces roughly 30% of total output; the top quartile produces over 50%.

BLUF: The study parameters and power-law finding are fully confirmed. The output concentration percentages are reasonable approximations of Paretian distribution properties but are not precise figures uniformly reported in the paper. The claim is substantially correct with minor imprecision on the quantitative characterizations.

Probability: Very likely (80-95%) | Confidence: High

Correction needed: The output concentration percentages (top decile ~30%, top quartile >50%) are consistent with Paretian distributions but should be characterized as implications of the distribution rather than exact reported figures.

Summary¶

Entity	Description
Claim Definition	Claim text, scope, status
Assessment	Full analytical product with reasoning chain
ACH Matrix	Evidence x hypotheses diagnosticity analysis
Self-Audit	ROBIS-adapted 4-domain process audit

Hypotheses¶

ID	Hypothesis	Status
H1	Claim is accurate as stated	Inconclusive
H2	Claim is partially correct — study details confirmed but output percentages are approximations	Supported
H3	Claim is materially wrong	Eliminated

Searches¶

ID	Target	Results	Selected
S01	O'Boyle Aguinis 2012 power law performance	10	4
S02	Criticism and rebuttal of O'Boyle Aguinis findings	10	3

Sources¶

Source	Description	Reliability	Relevance
SRC01	O'Boyle & Aguinis (2012) — Primary paper	High	High
SRC02	Beck, Beatty & Sackett (2014) — Critique	High	High

Revisit Triggers¶

Retraction or major correction of the O'Boyle & Aguinis (2012) paper
New meta-analysis substantially revising the power-law finding
Replication studies with contradictory results