{"schema_version":1,"experiment_id":"eoa_inverse_innovation_exp04_retrieval_first_paired20_20260802","cell_id":"deadweight_loss_reduction__astronomy_astrophysics","arm":"RETRIEVAL_FIRST","candidate_id":"deadweight_loss_reduction__astronomy_astrophysics__H1__v0","hypothesis_id":"H1","version":0,"title":"Scarcity-Weighted Telescope Credits with Protected Access and Delivery Rebates","problem":"Within the accepted-proposal-to-assignment workflow, flat observing-credit charges may create a timing-allocation wedge: requests for oversubscribed telescope, instrument, and observing-condition combinations face queues, while acceptable less-contended combinations may go unused. Existing pressure-aware queues already address much of this problem, so the proposal targets only the residual choice distortion attributable to teams facing the same credit charge across differently contended conditions.","actors":["Observing teams with accepted proposals","Small and early-career observing teams receiving protected-access credits","Time-allocation committee","Observatory scheduling and operations staff","Facility governance body authorized to set allocation policy"],"observable_state":"For each requested telescope-hour, the facility can observe the requested instrument and condition band, forecast available capacity and accepted demand, assigned scientific priority, credit balance and charge, execution outcome, unused capacity, and team access category. The hypothesized wedge is present only if equally priced requests cluster in high-contention bands while scientifically acceptable lower-contention bands remain unused and priority-weighted observations consequently go uncompleted.","consequence":"High-contention capacity can be consumed or queued without eliciting teams' willingness to substitute acceptable conditions, while lower-contention capacity remains unused. The resulting loss is fewer completed priority-weighted observations per available hour, with small teams potentially bearing disproportionate queue risk.","affected_objective":"Increase completed priority-weighted observations per available telescope-hour while preserving scientific review, operational and safety constraints, and early-career-team access.","intervention":"For a bounded set of accepted proposals, assign each team a noncash observing-credit budget and publish forecast credit charges by telescope, instrument, and observing-condition band. Charge more credits for forecast high-contention combinations and fewer for slack combinations, while leaving scientific eligibility and operational feasibility unchanged. Supply ring-fenced protected-access credits to eligible early-career teams and automatically restore credits whenever an observation is not delivered. Initially calculate allocations in shadow mode; permit a live pilot only after governance review of the shadow results and safeguards.","structural_mapping":[{"archetype_element":"Distortion Map","domain_realization":"Map each requested telescope-hour from flat credit charge through forecast contention, queue placement, execution, and any acceptable but unused alternative condition band."},{"archetype_element":"Protected Constraint Safeguard","domain_realization":"Preserve scientific-merit review, telescope and instrument safety, operational feasibility, time-critical requirements, and protected early-career access; price only among already eligible and feasible requests."},{"archetype_element":"Surplus Estimate","domain_realization":"Compare completed priority-weighted observations per available hour under the existing allocation and the shadow or pilot allocation, reporting uncertainty rather than monetizing scientific value."},{"archetype_element":"Affected-Party Incidence Map","domain_realization":"Report changes in execution rate, credit expenditure, delay, and access separately for early-career teams, other small teams, and the remaining accepted teams."},{"archetype_element":"Redesign Lever","domain_realization":"Replace the flat per-hour credit charge with forecast contention-dependent charges by telescope, instrument, and observing-condition band."},{"archetype_element":"Implementation Boundary","domain_realization":"Limit the first evaluation to accepted proposals, one facility-defined scheduling period, and no change to proposal acceptance, scientific rank, safety limits, or partner-share rules."},{"archetype_element":"Monitoring and Rebound Check","domain_realization":"Monitor utilization, completed priority-weighted observations, protected-group access, request inflation, strategic relabeling of constraints, forecast error, and displacement into newly congested bands."},{"archetype_element":"Rollback or Adjustment Rule","domain_realization":"Keep shadow mode as the default first step and revert any later pilot to the current scheduler if access or operational thresholds are breached."}],"mechanism_mapping":[{"mechanism_slug":"congestion_or_capacity_pricing_adjustment","role":"Convert forecast contention into a varying, noncash per-hour credit charge so teams can trade scarce conditions against acceptable slack alternatives.","counterfactual_removal":"Without this mechanism, teams continue to face a flat charge and the proposal no longer tests whether a user-facing scarcity signal changes request choices beyond existing pressure-aware scheduling."},{"mechanism_slug":"impact_assessment_table","role":"Record effects by actor, including completed observations, delays, credit use, protected constraints, early-career access, and precommitted halt triggers.","counterfactual_removal":"Without this mechanism, aggregate utilization gains could conceal concentrated access losses or operational harms."},{"mechanism_slug":"regulatory_simplification_pilot","role":"Confine the redesigned allocation rule to shadow evaluation and, only if authorized, a reversible pilot with explicit scope, monitoring, expiry, and rollback.","counterfactual_removal":"Without this mechanism, the intervention would expose the full allocation system to an inadequately tested rule and would provide no automatic reversion path."}],"causal_chain":["Flat charges make a requested hour equally costly in credits despite different forecast contention.","Teams therefore receive no credit-budget incentive to relax scientifically acceptable timing or condition constraints, beyond the signals and queue incentives already present in the baseline.","Forecast contention-dependent charges make scarce combinations consume more of a fixed noncash budget and slack combinations consume less.","Teams that can substitute revise requests toward acceptable lower-contention combinations, while protected-access credits limit exclusion of eligible early-career teams.","The scheduler receives a less-clustered feasible request set and can fill more otherwise unused capacity without changing scientific eligibility or safety constraints.","Completed priority-weighted observations per available hour rise if the scarcity signal adds value beyond existing pressure-aware, condition-aware scheduling.","Delivery rebates prevent failed or undelivered observations from exhausting budgets, while incidence monitoring detects exclusion, gaming, rebound congestion, or forecast-error harms."],"baseline":"The strongest baseline is the facility's existing scientific-priority and condition-aware dynamic queue, including published pressure information and any current ability for teams to adjust duration, weather limits, instrument grouping, or observing windows. Credits, where used, are flat rather than forecast-contention priced, and undelivered-time treatment follows current policy. Evaluation must compare against this active baseline, not against first-come-first-served allocation.","nearest_rivals":["VLA pressure-aware prioritizer and dynamic queue","Alnitak proposal-awarded telescope credits with delivered-time-only debit","Condition-aware priority optimization in the Observatory Control System Adaptive Scheduler and planned TMT observing modes","Auction and priority-contract mechanisms for uncertain Space Station resources"],"remaining_contrastive_claim":"Within the opened sources, no noncommercial scientific observatory uses an ex ante team budget whose per-hour credit charge varies by forecast telescope, instrument, and observing-condition contention while also supplying protected-access credits and automatically restoring credits for undelivered observations.","authority_safety":{"decision_authority":"The facility governance body may authorize allocation-policy experiments; the time-allocation committee retains scientific-priority authority, and observatory operations staff retain safety, feasibility, and execution authority. The research team may analyze historical data and produce shadow schedules but may not change live allocations without explicit facility approval.","authorized_first_step":"Run a preregistered, read-only shadow replay on one completed scheduling period, using only accepted requests and archived forecasts or forecast proxies, and compare the proposed credit choices and schedule with the recorded baseline without affecting telescope operations or team balances.","excluded_actions":["Changing proposal acceptance or scientific-merit rankings","Relaxing telescope, instrument, weather, personnel, or operational safety limits","Selling credits, allowing cash purchases, or transferring credits between teams","Reducing protected partner shares or protected early-career access entitlements","Charging credits for undelivered observations","Changing live schedules during the first evidence step","Using institutional prestige or ability to pay as an allocation input","Expanding beyond the bounded facility period without a new authorization decision"],"halt_rollback":"The shadow evaluation stops if required data cannot support reproducible contention estimates or protected-group measurement. Any subsequently authorized live pilot automatically expires at the end of its approved period and reverts immediately to the baseline scheduler if early-career access falls by more than 2 percentage points, safety or operational constraints are bypassed, forecast errors cause material systematic mispricing, or gaming prevents interpretable evaluation."},"negative_tests":{"strongest_counterevidence":"The broad mechanism is substantially anticipated: VLA already converts observing-window pressure into operator-assigned priority and publishes congestion information; condition-aware schedulers already optimize effective priority; Alnitak already awards telescope credits and charges only delivered time; TMT provides a protected-share analogue; and Space Station research already tests scarcity-based bidding for uncertain scientific capacity. These precedents make the residual claim an unverified integration claim, not a claim that pressure-aware allocation, credits, rebates, protected shares, or scientific-resource auctions are individually new.","problem_falsifier":"The problem is falsified for the bounded facility period if logs show no meaningful coexistence of oversubscribed requested condition bands and unused scientifically acceptable alternatives, or if existing pressure-aware scheduling and observer revisions already exhaust feasible substitution so flat credit charges do not explain lost priority-weighted completions.","intervention_falsifier":"The intervention's stated causal claim is falsified if a preregistered bounded pilot fails to increase completed priority-weighted observations per available hour by at least 10%, or if it reduces early-career-team access by more than 2 percentage points. It is also rejected if apparent gains disappear under plausible contention forecasts or are attributable to changed scientific rankings, relaxed constraints, or extra capacity rather than the credit-price lever.","risks":["Forecast error may overprice capacity that later becomes slack or underprice capacity that becomes congested.","Teams may inflate flexibility, misstate constraints, split requests, or strategically wait for lower prices.","Scarcity pricing may favor teams with larger credit endowments unless budgets and protected credits are designed carefully.","Demand may shift into previously slack bands and recreate congestion without increasing total completed value.","Priority-weighted completion is an imperfect proxy for scientific value and may embed contested committee judgments.","A small or atypical pilot may not generalize across instruments, seasons, or facilities.","The added choice and accounting layer may impose administrative burden that offsets allocation gains.","Protected credits may preserve nominal access while access to the most valuable conditions still deteriorates."]},"next_evidence_step":"Using one completed scheduling period, construct a preregistered shadow replay at the unit of one requested telescope-hour by instrument and condition band. Freeze accepted proposals, scientific ranks, capacity, safety rules, and protected shares; estimate contention using only information that would have been available before assignment; simulate flat-charge and scarcity-weighted credit choices with automatic delivery rebates and protected-access endowments; and report utilization, completed priority-weighted observations per available hour, early-career access, incidence by team type, forecast sensitivity, and gaming indicators. The result authorizes no live change; it only supports a separate go/no-go review for a small expiring pilot.","prior_art_status":"SEARCHED_BOUNDED","revision_record":{"parent_version":null,"progress_targets_addressed":["Complete the selected H1 hypothesis without changing its problem or causal lever","Bound the proposal against the substantial prior-art collision","Specify authority, protected-purpose safeguards, falsifiers, and a reversible first evidence step"],"conceptual_changes":["Narrowed the proposal from a broad telescope-allocation innovation to the integration of user-spent scarcity-weighted credits, protected-access endowments, and automatic restoration for undelivered observations.","Defined the relevant wedge as residual behavior not already corrected by pressure-aware and condition-aware scheduling."],"operational_changes":["Made the first step a read-only shadow replay over one completed scheduling period.","Ring-fenced scientific review, safety, operational feasibility, partner shares, and protected early-career access.","Added explicit expiry, halt, rollback, incidence, and gaming checks."],"evidence_changes":["Treated VLA prioritization, OCS and TMT condition-aware scheduling, Alnitak credits, and Space Station auction mechanisms as strong counterevidence rather than novelty support.","Retained only the exact four-element integration as the unresolved contrastive claim."],"claim_changes":["Preserved the pilot threshold of at least a 10% increase in completed priority-weighted observations per available hour without more than a 2-percentage-point reduction in early-career access.","Avoided claiming world novelty or that the underlying allocation problem is already established at the target facility."]}}