Paper A v3.18.2: address codex GPT-5.5 round-16 Minor-Revision findings

Codex independent peer review (paper/codex_review_gpt55_v3_18_1.md) audited
empirical claims against scripts/JSON reports rather than rubber-stamping
prior Accept verdicts. Verdict: Minor Revision. This commit addresses every
flagged item.

- Soften mechanism-identification language (Results IV-D.1, Discussion B):
  per-signature cosine "fails to reject unimodality" rather than "reflects a
  single dominant generative mechanism"; framing tied to joint evidence.
- Replace overabsolute "single stored image" with multi-template phrasing
  in Introduction and Methodology III-A.
- Reframe Methodology III-H so practitioner knowledge is non-load-bearing;
  evidentiary basis is the paper's own image evidence.
- Fix stale section cross-references after the v3.18 retitling: IV-F.* ->
  IV-G.* in 11 locations across methodology and results.
- Fix 0.941 / 0.945 / 0.9407 wording in Methodology III-K to use the
  calibration-fold P5 = 0.9407 and the rounded sensitivity cut 0.945.
- Soften "sharp discontinuity" in Results IV-G.3 to "23-28 percentage-point
  gap consistent with firm-wide non-hand-signing practice".
- Soften Conclusion's "directly generalizable" with explicit conditions on
  analogous anchors and artifact-generation physics.
- Add Appendix B: table-to-script provenance map (15 manuscript tables
  mapped to generating scripts and JSON report artifacts).
- New script signature_analysis/28_byte_identity_decomposition.py produces
  reproducible artifacts for two previously-unverified claims:
  (a) 145 / 50 / 180 / 35 Firm A byte-identity decomposition (verified);
  (b) cross-firm dual-descriptor convergence -- corrected from the previous
      manuscript text "non-Firm-A 11.3% vs Firm A 58.7% (5x)" to the
      database-verified "non-Firm-A 42.12% vs Firm A 88.32% (~2.1x)".
- Clarify scripts 19 / 21 docstrings: legacy EER / FRR / Precision / F1
  helpers are retained for diagnostic use only and are NOT cited as
  biometric performance in the paper. Remove "interview evidence" wording.
- Rebuild Paper_A_IEEE_Access_Draft_v3.docx.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>

paper/paper_a_appendix_v3.md

@@ -33,3 +33,30 @@ Taken together, Table A.I shows that the signature-level BD/McCrary transitions
 This observation supports the main-text decision to use BD/McCrary as a density-smoothness diagnostic rather than as a threshold estimator and reinforces the joint reading of Section IV-D that per-signature similarity does not form a clean two-mechanism mixture.
 
 Raw per-bin $Z$ sequences and $p$-values for every (variant, bin-width) panel are available in the supplementary materials.
+
+# Appendix B. Table-to-Script Provenance
+
+For reproducibility, the following table maps each numerical table in Section IV to the analysis script that produces its underlying values and to the JSON / Markdown report file emitted by that script. Scripts referenced are under `signature_analysis/` and reports under the project's `reports/` tree.
+
+<!-- TABLE B.I: Manuscript table → reproduction artifact
+| Manuscript table | Generating script | Report artifact |
+|------------------|-------------------|-----------------|
+| Table III (extraction results) | `02_extract_features.py`; `09_pdf_signature_verdict.py` | extraction logs (supplementary) |
+| Table IV (intra/inter all-pairs cosine statistics) | `10_formal_statistical_analysis.py` | `reports/formal_statistical/formal_statistical_results.json` |
+| Table V (Hartigan dip test) | `15_hartigan_dip_test.py` | `reports/dip_test/dip_test_results.json` |
+| Table VI (signature-level threshold-estimator summary) | `17_beta_mixture_em.py`; `25_bd_mccrary_sensitivity.py` | `reports/beta_mixture/beta_mixture_results.json`; `reports/bd_sensitivity/bd_sensitivity.json` |
+| Table IX (Firm A whole-sample capture rates) | `19_pixel_identity_validation.py`; `24_validation_recalibration.py` | `reports/pixel_validation/pixel_validation_results.json`; `reports/validation_recalibration/validation_recalibration.json` |
+| Table X (cosine threshold sweep, FAR vs inter-CPA negatives) | `21_expanded_validation.py` | `reports/expanded_validation/expanded_validation_results.json` |
+| Table XI (held-out vs calibration Firm A capture rates) | `24_validation_recalibration.py` | `reports/validation_recalibration/validation_recalibration.json` |
+| Table XII (operational-cut sensitivity 0.95 vs 0.945) | `24_validation_recalibration.py` | `reports/validation_recalibration/validation_recalibration.json` |
+| Table XIII (Firm A per-year cosine distribution) | `13_deloitte_distribution_analysis.py` | `reports/deloitte_distribution/deloitte_distribution_results.json` |
+| Tables XIV / XV (partner-level similarity ranking) | `22_partner_ranking.py` | `reports/partner_ranking/partner_ranking_results.json` |
+| Table XVI (intra-report classification agreement) | `23_intra_report_consistency.py` | `reports/intra_report/intra_report_results.json` |
+| Table XVII (document-level five-way classification) | `09_pdf_signature_verdict.py`; `12_generate_pdf_level_report.py` | `reports/pdf_level/pdf_level_results.json` |
+| Table XVIII (backbone ablation) | `paper/ablation_backbone_comparison.py` | `reports/ablation/ablation_results.json` |
+| Table A.I (BD/McCrary bin-width sensitivity) | `25_bd_mccrary_sensitivity.py` | `reports/bd_sensitivity/bd_sensitivity.json` |
+| Byte-identity decomposition (145 / 50 / 180 / 35; Section IV-F.1) | `28_byte_identity_decomposition.py` | `reports/byte_identity_decomp/byte_identity_decomposition.json` |
+| Cross-firm dual-descriptor convergence (Section IV-H.2) | `28_byte_identity_decomposition.py` | `reports/byte_identity_decomp/byte_identity_decomposition.json` |
+-->
+
+The table-to-script mapping above is intended as a navigation aid for replicators. All scripts run deterministically under the fixed random seeds documented in the supplementary materials; report files are committed alongside the scripts so that each numerical claim in Section IV traces to a specific JSON field rather than to an undocumented intermediate computation.