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R0007/2026-03-20/C003

Claim: Their 2014 follow-up found that 82.5% of 229 samples had significantly heavy right tails.

BLUF: The 229 samples and heavy-tails finding come from Aguinis, O'Boyle, Gonzalez-Mule, and Joo, but this was published in 2016 (not 2014) as "Cumulative Advantage: Conductors and Insulators of Heavy-Tailed Productivity Distributions and Productivity Stars" in Personnel Psychology 69(1): 3-66. The 2014 paper was "Star Performers in Twenty-First Century Organizations." The claim conflates two different follow-up papers. The 82.5% figure could not be independently verified through web-accessible sources but the 229 samples figure is confirmed.

Probability: Likely (55-80%) | Confidence: Medium

Correction needed: The year should be 2016, not 2014. The paper is by Aguinis, O'Boyle, Gonzalez-Mule, and Joo (not just O'Boyle and Aguinis). The 82.5% figure needs full-text verification.


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 Eliminated
H2 Claim is partially correct — findings exist but year and authorship are wrong Supported
H3 Claim is materially wrong Eliminated

Searches

ID Target Results Selected
S01 Aguinis O'Boyle follow-up heavy tails 229 samples 10 3

Sources

Source Description Reliability Relevance
SRC01 Aguinis et al. (2016) Cumulative Advantage High High