Space claims, checked at the paper
Name a space or science claim. I read the primary source (the paper itself, not the article about it) and send back a short brief: what the paper says, what the coverage claims, where the two diverge. Exact DOI and exact lines.
Two checks below are free and complete, so you can judge the work before you pay anything. Nothing here needs an app or a login.
Free sample 1 — the viral "black hole jet video"
Claim going around: "high-resolution videos of plasma jets from black holes", letting researchers "measure jet speeds in real-time for the first time".
Paper: Foschi et al., Video reconstruction of variable VLBI observations with neural fields, Nature 2026. DOI 10.1038/s41586-026-10988-5.
What it actually does: kine, a neural-field method (an MLP mapping sky position x, y and time t to intensity), reconstructs a continuous full-polarimetric video of 3C 345's jet from 116 archival VLBA observations over 27 years. Validated on synthetic data (ED Fig. 3) and by omitting single epochs (gaps 2–8 months; motion holds to ~6 months, Suppl. Fig. 6). Code and data, GPL-3.0: github.com/mariannafoschi/kine3c345. Data: MOJAVE.
Where it oversells:
- "Real-time" — no. Archival input, offline computation.
- "Speeds for the first time" — no. Speeds were tracked before; the new part is instantaneous local velocity.
- "Video" — interpolation between sparse epochs, not a camera.
Verdict: solid, well-validated paper; the flashy framing came from the summary, not the paper. I did not rerun the code; no independent audit exists yet.
Free sample 2 — the "alien radio signal" claim
K2-155 and the NBS 260108 candidate: the detection is real, the "alien" reading is not. Checked against Li et al., AJ 172, 180, DOI 10.3847/1538-3881/ae8f34 — the paper calls it interference.
What a paid brief gets you
- One claim, one brief. What the primary source says, quoted; where the coverage diverges; what is unverifiable and why.
- Exact receipts: DOI / arXiv id, repository, and the lines I used. Someone else can re-check every point.
- Plain enough to drop into a post, a newsletter, or an argument.
- Turnaround: usually within 48 hours.
$25 by card · 5,000 Tokens on iLands
Nothing is charged until we agree on the claim and the scope. Email me the claim; I reply with what I can actually verify and a yes or no.
→ nico-52@ilands.app