{"schema_version":1,"assessment_id":"eoa_inverse_innovation_exp03_opportunity320_20260801","source_experiment_id":"eoa_inverse_innovation_exp03_full320_20260801","cell_id":"deadweight_loss_reduction__cognitive_science","archetype_slug":"deadweight_loss_reduction","domain_slug":"cognitive_science","title":"Task-Specific Eligibility for Minimal-Risk Cognitive Research","opportunity_summary":"Audit whether one minimal-risk cognitive-study protocol uses a coarse categorical exclusion that rejects willing participants who could satisfy task-specific safety, consent, and validity requirements, then consider an ethics-approved, reversible comparison of the existing rule with functional screening and accommodations. The opportunity is conditional: the packet does not establish that overbroad eligibility is prevalent, binding, or consequential.","adopter_authorizer":"A principal investigator and study team would adopt and propose the protocol change; the institutional review board or equivalent ethics authority must authorize, constrain, renew, or stop it.","scores":{"meaningful_impact":{"score":3,"rationale":"If eligibility is the binding constraint, the proposal could increase valid completions and population coverage while reducing recruitment delay. The packet supplies no evidence about how many candidates are avoidably excluded or the magnitude of forgone scientific value."},"stakeholder_pull":{"score":2,"rationale":"The candidate identifies plausible beneficiaries, including excluded participants, investigators, and evidence users, but provides no observed requests, adopter commitments, protocol demand, or evidence that investigators and ethics authorities prioritize this change."},"incremental_advantage":{"score":4,"rationale":"Unlike improved outreach among already-eligible candidates, task-specific screening directly addresses the posited eligibility gate and preserves explicit safety and validity safeguards. Its advantage disappears if recruitment supply, staffing, matching, or a deliberately narrow estimand is the actual constraint."},"distinctiveness_plausibility":{"score":3,"rationale":"The mechanism is coherent and plausibly testable, but prior art is explicitly unsearched. The packet therefore supports plausibility, not distinctiveness from existing inclusive-research, accommodation, or functional-screening practices."},"technical_implementability":{"score":3,"rationale":"A protocol audit, functional screen, accommodations, monitoring, and rollback are operationally conceivable for one minimal-risk task. Implementability remains uncertain because the screen must reliably separate candidates and accommodations must not alter the measured construct beyond an accepted margin."},"adoption_authority_feasibility":{"score":4,"rationale":"The candidate clearly assigns proposal authority to the principal investigator and approval and stop authority to the ethics body, with prohibited actions and rollback conditions. Feasibility is not maximal because approval for any particular protocol is untested."},"evidence_readiness":{"score":4,"rationale":"The candidate supplies separate problem and intervention falsifiers, a bounded protocol-level audit, comparators, monitored outcomes, and rollback logic. Exact thresholds, instruments, subgroup analyses, and missing-data rules still require task-specific preregistration."},"safety_net_benefit":{"score":4,"rationale":"The design retains informed consent, privacy, ethics review, task-specific safeguards, monitoring, pause criteria, and restoration of the prior rule. Residual risks include harm, consent failure, privacy exposure, invalid measurement, coercive inclusion, and staff overload."},"scalability":{"score":2,"rationale":"Evidence from one selected minimal-risk task cannot be generalized across tasks or populations, and each extension may require new scientific justification, screening validation, accommodations, staff capacity, and ethics approval."}},"score_confidence":"MODERATE","costs":{"first_evidence":{"band_2026_usd":"10K_TO_50K","scope":"A records-based audit of one minimal-risk protocol, its categorical exclusions, documented rejection reasons, enrollment constraints, and task-level rationales; no eligibility change or live enrollment.","confidence":"MODERATE","assumptions":["Relevant protocol and screening records are accessible under existing privacy controls.","The audit is limited to one protocol and uses investigator, ethics, methods, and data-analysis labor.","No new participant recruitment or specialized equipment is required."]},"initial_deployment_startup":{"band_2026_usd":"10K_TO_50K","scope":"Design a task-specific functional screen and accommodation workflow for one protocol, define measures and margins, prepare training and privacy controls, preregister the evaluation, and submit an ethics amendment.","confidence":"LOW","assumptions":["The study remains minimal risk.","Only one coarse exclusion is redesigned.","Required accommodations use ordinary research staff and commercially available equipment or software.","The functional screen does not require extensive clinical validation."]},"operational_launch":{"band_2026_usd":"50K_TO_250K","scope":"Run one small, time-limited, ethics-approved pilot comparing the amended pathway with the prior eligibility rule, including recruitment tracking, accommodations, monitoring, analysis, and authority review.","confidence":"LOW","assumptions":["The pilot occurs at one site and concerns one protocol.","Enrollment volume is sufficient within the pilot period.","Independent consent, safety, validity, burden, access, and subgroup monitoring are included.","No serious event triggers costly investigation or early termination."]},"annual_recurring":{"band_2026_usd":"50K_TO_250K","scope":"Maintain task-specific screening and accommodations for one active research program, including staff time, privacy administration, monitoring, refresher training, ethics reporting, and periodic validity review.","confidence":"LOW","assumptions":["The approach continues across a small number of minimal-risk studies at one institution.","Accommodation needs remain moderate and do not require major facilities changes.","Each new task still receives protocol-specific scientific and ethics review.","The packet provides no utilization or staffing data, so this is a scenario band rather than a prevalence-based forecast."]}},"research_burden":"HIGH","earliest_credible_horizon":"3_TO_12_MONTHS","pipeline_gates":{"recognizable_externally_supportable_problem":{"status":"YES","reason":"The candidate specifies an observable protocol-level problem: candidates rejected solely by categorical rules while the underlying task-specific safety or validity concern is not assessed. Its actual frequency and importance remain to be measured."},"identifiable_adopter_or_authorizer":{"status":"YES","reason":"The principal investigator and study team are identifiable adopters, while the institutional review board or equivalent ethics authority is explicitly identified as the required authorizer and stop authority."},"distinct_testable_incremental_claim":{"status":"YES","reason":"The testable claim is that replacing one coarse exclusion with functional screening and accommodations yields more valid completions, faster recruitment, or broader relevant coverage than the prior rule without exceeding preregistered safety, consent, validity, burden, or equity margins."},"bounded_next_evidence_step":{"status":"YES","reason":"A records-only audit of one minimal-risk protocol can compare categorical rejections with task-specific rationales and rival bottlenecks before any live eligibility change."},"no_unresolved_safety_or_authority_stop":{"status":"UNCERTAIN","reason":"The packet preserves ethics authority and specifies exclusions and rollback, but screening reliability, consent assessment, privacy handling, accommodation validity, operational thresholds, and ethics approval remain unresolved for the selected task."},"implementation_cost_scope_and_range":{"status":"YES","reason":"The candidate bounds the initial work to one protocol, one redesigned exclusion, an approved time-limited pilot, monitoring, and rollback, permitting broad resource-equivalent bands. Exact costs remain uncertain because the task, sample, accommodation needs, and institutional process are unspecified."}},"blocking_evidence":["Whether a one-protocol audit finds any categorical exclusion broader than its documented task-specific safety, consent, estimand, confounding, or construct-validity purpose.","Whether rejected candidates form a meaningful potentially qualifying group and whether eligibility, rather than recruitment supply, matching, compensation, staffing, or deliberate study scope, is the binding constraint.","Whether a functional screen can reliably identify candidates who satisfy preserved safeguards without creating unacceptable privacy exposure or strategic misreporting.","Whether proposed accommodations preserve the measured construct and data validity within task-specific, ethics-approved margins.","Whether the institutional review board will approve the screening method, comparison design, monitoring thresholds, and rollback rules.","Whether an approved pilot improves valid completions, recruitment time, or relevant population coverage without excess harm, consent failure, burden, invalid data, or subgroup disparity.","Whether comparable eligibility and accommodation practices already exist; prior art is explicitly unsearched."],"next_evidence_step":"Conduct a records-only audit of one minimal-risk protocol before changing eligibility: compare the existing categorical exclusions and documented rejected candidates with each exclusion's task-specific safety, consent, estimand, and validity rationale, while separately measuring recruitment, matching, compensation, and staffing bottlenecks. Stop or deprioritize if exclusions are individually justified, almost no rejected candidates could plausibly meet preserved functional requirements, or a rival bottleneck dominates; otherwise use the audit to draft an ethics-reviewed pilot with preregistered margins.","research_questions":["For the selected protocol, what safety, consent, estimand, confounding, or construct-validity purpose does each categorical exclusion serve?","How many otherwise willing candidates were rejected solely by the selected rule, and how many could plausibly satisfy task-specific requirements?","Is eligibility actually more constraining than recruitment supply, matching, compensation, scheduling, or staffing?","Can the functional screen be applied consistently, privately, and without inducing strategic reporting or excessive staff burden?","Which accommodations preserve consent quality and the measured construct within an accepted margin?","What comparison design, outcome definitions, subgroup analyses, missing-data rules, and pause thresholds would the ethics authority accept?","Does the pilot produce a meaningful gain over the prior rule without breaching safety, consent, validity, burden, access, or equity margins?","What ethics guidance, inclusive-research practices, functional-screening methods, accommodation protocols, or comparable amendments constitute relevant prior art?"],"recommendation":"VALIDATE_PROBLEM_FIRST","uncertainty_constraints":["Problem prevalence and effect size are unsupported hypotheses.","No stakeholder demand or adopter commitment is reported.","Prior art and world-level distinctiveness are unmeasured.","The binding constraint may be recruitment, matching, compensation, staffing, or deliberate scientific scope rather than eligibility.","Task-specific screening reliability and accommodation validity are unknown.","Operational thresholds and ethics approval depend on the selected task, population, instruments, and institution.","Cost bands are scenario-based resource equivalents, not estimates derived from observed utilization.","Results from one minimal-risk protocol cannot justify generalization to other tasks, populations, or higher-risk research."],"closed_book_prior_art_boundary":"The sealed packet labels prior art UNSEARCHED and provides no external evidence about existing ethics guidance, inclusive-research practices, functional eligibility screening, accommodation protocols, prevalence, market size, realized impact, or exact cost. This assessment therefore makes no novelty, rarity, adoption, or comparative-practice claim beyond the candidate's internally specified mechanism and tests."}