Paper A v3.16: remove unsupported visual-inspection / sanity-sample claims

User review of the v3.15 Sanity Sample subsection revealed that the
paper's claim of "inter-rater agreement with the classifier in all 30
cases" (Results IV-G.4) was not backed by any data artifact in the
repository. Script 19 exports a 30-signature stratified sample to
reports/pixel_validation/sanity_sample.csv, but that CSV contains
only classifier output fields (stratum, sig_id, cosine, dhash_indep,
pixel_identical, closest_match) and no human-annotation column, and
no subsequent script computes any human--classifier agreement metric.
User confirmed that the only human annotation in the project was
the YOLO training-set bounding-box labeling; signature classification
(stamped vs hand-signed) was done entirely by automated numerical
methods. The 30/30 sanity-sample claim was therefore factually
unsupported and has been removed.

Investigation additionally revealed that the "independent visual
inspection of randomly sampled Firm A reports reveals pixel-identical
signature images...for many of the sampled partners" framing used as
the first strand of Firm A's replication-dominated evidence (Section
III-H first strand, Section V-C first strand, and the Conclusion
fourth contribution) had the same provenance problem: no human
visual inspection was performed. The underlying FACT (that Firm A
contains many byte-identical same-CPA signature pairs) is correct
and fully supported by automated byte-level pair analysis (Script 19),
but the "visual inspection" phrasing misrepresents the provenance.

Changes:

1. Results IV-G.4 "Sanity Sample" subsection deleted entirely
   (results_v3.md L271-273).

2. Methodology III-K penultimate paragraph describing the 30-signature
   manual visual sanity inspection deleted (methodology_v3.md L259).

3. Methodology Section III-H first strand (L152) rewritten from
   "independent visual inspection of randomly sampled Firm A reports
   reveals pixel-identical signature images...for many of the sampled
   partners" to "automated byte-level pair analysis (Section IV-G.1)
   identifies 145 Firm A signatures that are byte-identical to at
   least one other same-CPA signature from a different audit report,
   distributed across 50 distinct Firm A partners (of 180 registered); 35 of these byte-identical matches span different fiscal years."
   All four numbers verified directly from the signature_analysis.db
   database via pixel_identical_to_closest = 1 filter joined to
   accountants.firm.

4. Discussion V-C first strand (L41) rewritten analogously to refer
   to byte-level pair evidence with the same four verified numbers.

5. Conclusion fourth contribution (L21) rewritten to "byte-level
   pair analysis finding of 145 pixel-identical calibration-firm
   signatures across 50 distinct partners (Section IV-G.1)."

6. Abstract (L5): "visual inspection and accountant-level mixture
   evidence..." rewritten as "byte-level pixel-identity evidence
   (145 signatures across 50 partners) and accountant-level mixture
   evidence..." Abstract now at 250/250 words.

7. Introduction (L55): "visual-inspection evidence" relabeled
   "byte-level pixel-identity evidence" for internal consistency.

8. Methodology III-H penultimate (L164): "validation role is played
   by the visual inspection" relabeled "validation role is played
   by the byte-level pixel-identity evidence" for consistency.

All substantive claims are preserved and now back-traceable to
Script 19 output and the signature_analysis.db pixel_identical_to_closest
flag. This correction brings the paper's descriptive language into
strict alignment with its actual methodology, which is fully
automated (except for YOLO training annotation, disclosed in
Methodology Section III-B).

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
This commit is contained in:
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@@ -268,10 +268,6 @@ The High-confidence non-hand-signed share grows from 45.62% to 46.98%.
We interpret this sensitivity pattern as indicating that the classifier's aggregate and high-confidence output is robust to the choice of operational cut within the accountant-level convergence band, and that the movement is concentrated at the Uncertain/Moderate-confidence boundary.
The paper therefore retains cos $> 0.95$ as the primary operational cut for transparency and reports the 0.945 results as a sensitivity check rather than as a deployed alternative; a future deployment requiring tighter accountant-level alignment could substitute cos $> 0.945$ without altering the substantive firm-level conclusions.
### 4) Sanity Sample
A 30-signature stratified visual sanity sample (six signatures each from pixel-identical, high-cos/low-dh, borderline, style-only, and likely-genuine strata) yielded full human--classifier agreement (30/30); this sample contributed only to spot-check and is not used to compute reported metrics.
## H. Additional Firm A Benchmark Validation
The capture rates of Section IV-F are a within-sample consistency check: they evaluate how well a threshold captures Firm A, but the thresholds themselves are anchored to Firm A's percentiles.