Scoring formula: D×3 base cost makes the headline score misleading for large reference lists #43

Summary

The #3 clean-corpus runs surfaced a real flaw in the scoring formula: the D × 3 base cost penalizes every Defensible (clean) reference, so the headline score in the Executive Dashboard becomes misleading for large reference lists. A perfectly clean 30-reference article scores only 100 − 30×3 = 10 — which reads as alarming when the article is in fact clean.

Evidence (from committed runs)

A clean 30-ref article (5) scoring far lower than a dirty 5-ref article (54) is backwards as a headline integrity signal. The real calibration signal is % Defensible, which #42 adopted in the real-articles README — but the formula and the Executive Dashboard gauge still surface the misleading raw score.

The question

Should clean references incur a penalty at all? Options:

• Remove or shrink the D × 3 term (clean refs shouldn't cost points).
• Switch the headline metric to a normalized/percentage basis (e.g., % Defensible, or score per reference) so list length doesn't dominate.
• Keep the raw score but reframe the Executive Dashboard so % Defensible is the primary number and the raw score is secondary/contextualized.

This is a prompt + report-template change, so it would ship as a vNext prompt revision (not an edit to a frozen version).

Secondary calibration note (lower priority)

In the Ahmadinezhad run, v5 gave Moderate to ref 4 (a UNICEF report — grey literature). CLAUDE.md says "do not over-flag grey literature." The Moderate was tagged "bibliographic" (couldn't fully pin the citation) rather than a fraud flag, so it's mild, but it's worth watching whether v5 is slightly conservative on confirmable grey-lit from major orgs (WHO/UNICEF/CDC). Fold into the scoring/calibration review.

Origin

Surfaced during the #3 clean-corpus addition (2026-06-19 issue-harvest sweep). References were verified real against Crossref before #42 merged; this issue tracks the scoring-methodology finding that the run exposed.