The Null Institute / Publications
All Research
Independent reports, verification pilots, methodological notes and commentary. Publications are grouped by format, not by a claim of peer-review or certainty. Original sources, methods, limitations, and supporting materials are linked within each record where available.
20 records
Small SBA Loans Fell 35%. Outside Five Lenders, Their Share Rose
We independently analysed 403,644 SBA 7(a) loan records. Approvals under $50,000 fell 34.7% in FY2026, but five lender names account for 88.2% of the net decline; the small-loan share actually rose among other lenders.
AI Tutors and the Human Work Behind 94,385 Checks
An independent audit of Google and Eedi's 1,179-pupil trial: immediate maths gains, no detected Star Maths advantage, and 94,385 mandatory human checks. The trial cannot yet establish staffing savings.
Friday the 13th: We Rechecked the Study Behind the Accident Scare
We reanalysed all 61 observations behind a famous Friday-the-13th accident study. Hospital admissions rose in six matched date pairs, but the statistical conclusion changes with the test. Motorway traffic was lower, while shopping was not.
A Sixfold Birthday-Week Disease Signal Under Audit: Statistical Inconsistencies and Automatically Generated Birth Dates
An independent audit of a reported sixfold HFMD birthday-week effect finds a nonreproducible chi-square statistic, regression-model inconsistencies, and historical evidence that China's disease-reporting system generated birth dates from ages. The mechanism's role in Yunnan remains unproven.
Can We Rank Countries by Smiling? An Audit of 125 Geographies and 24 Source Families
A secondary synthesis of 24 smiling-data source families across 125 geographies. We audit cross-study concordance, model weighting and the limits of claims about happiness.
Data Integrity in a 28-Country Political Image Study: Research Index
Independent audit of 79,500 political candidate images identifies inconsistent happiness denominators and incompatible image-coordinate frames. Primary expression regressions reproduce; close-up analysis remains scale-sensitive. Includes full report, source code and checksums.
Inconsistent Denominators and Image-Coordinate Frames in a 28-Country Visual Communication Dataset
An independent, source-verifiable reanalysis of 79,500 political images finds a numerator–denominator mismatch in published country percentages and incompatible facial coordinates and image frames. Includes reproduced logistic models, methodological limitations and open code.
A Likely Double Count in a Published Water–Mortality Study
An independent audit of NHANES 1999–2014 finds that the water-source distributions reported by Zhou et al. (2022) closely match a reconstruction with likely double counting of drinking water after 2005. The mortality implications remain unresolved.
Blood Pressure Reclassification in NHANES 2021–2023: Research Index
Research index entry: survey-weighted NHANES reanalysis of 6,100 adults, with 16.41% changing US category between first reading and mean of three. Read the full report at the original URL.
Occupational Mortality in Spain: An Age-Standardised INE Reanalysis, 2022–2023
Official INE reanalysis of employed adults aged 35–64. An elementary-to-scientific occupation mortality indicator ratio of 1.99 in men versus 1.30 in women, independently checked across 108 source cells; not causal or life expectancy.