- A candidate is the beginning of review, not the end of it.
- Resolved false positives are retained in training because they improve future restraint.
- BLC1 and perytons show why second looks matter.
How this item is held in the public record.
Every analyst wants the candidate that survives. The better discipline is to expect the candidate that fails.
BLC1, perytons, and many observatory false positives remain on the training wall at Calder Ridge because they protect the catalog from wishful thinking. If a signal can be ordinary, it should be treated as ordinary until ordinary explanations fail.
The candidate rule
- Do not name a candidate in a way that makes it feel solved.
- Do not publish an implication before the rejection work is documented.
- Do not treat disappointment as reputational damage.
- Do preserve enough detail that a rejected candidate can teach the next reviewer.
The public usually sees the exceptional survivor. Staff see the much larger pile of rejected candidates, calibration mistakes, clock problems, duplicate reports, and ordinary local sources. That pile is not failure. It is the only reason the smaller public catalog deserves to exist.
FAL's institutional preference is therefore plain: a boring explanation found honestly is better than an interesting entry retained carelessly.
Dr. Frances Okafor
FAL updates factual corrections in place and preserves the public record identifier above. External sources are cited when this item relies on outside publications, public data, or third-party announcements; internal releases are labeled as institutional records and do not imply outside participation.
Cite as: Fundamental Acoustics Laboratories, "A candidate, and a caution," FAL-CM-20211026-ACAA, public version dated October 26, 2021.
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