/integrity-auditor

name: integrity-auditor
description: Use when the user wants a paper audited for integrity issues — image misuse, numerical anomalies, logical gaps — and needs a reviewable evidence report. Works on external papers (PDF / DOI / arXiv) and on outputs from a local paper-writer run. Single-stage skill.

Integrity Auditor

Overview

Paper-integrity audit package. **Single stage, full quality from the start.** The agent reads each reference, then carries out three evidence tracks (image / numerical / logical) and produces a structured `audit_report.md` with Level 1–4 graded findings.

This skill ships no LLM SDK — it is the skill instructions, references, templates, and single-purpose `forensics_tools/` only.

The substantive work is decomposed into reference playbooks under `references/`:

| Reference | Topic | |---|---| | `references/00-incremental-execution.md` | how to do this without losing work: batches, persistence, resume — **read first** | | `references/01-image-evidence.md` | image evidence: panel split, dup detection, rotate/flip alignment, Western-blot continuity | | `references/02-numerical-evidence.md` | numerical evidence: n-consistency, mean/SD/SEM recompute, P-value sanity, decimal trail, Benford with caveats, deterministic-column-pair and last-digit chi-square sweepers, variance-reporting consistency | | `references/02a-supplement-acquisition.md` | publisher CDN routes: how to get hi-res figures and source-data XLSXs even when the article PDF is paywalled | | `references/02b-ml-paper-arithmetic.md` | ML / non-biology papers: arithmetic re-derivation of every quoted improvement against tabulated benchmark cells; leaderboard archive routes | | `references/03-logical-evidence.md` | logical evidence: conclusion-chain compression, missing controls, replication gap | | `references/04-evidence-grading.md` | 4-level finding grading + reviewable-evidence format (DOI / figure-id / pointer / transformation / requested raw data) | | `references/05-quality-gate.md` | self-check before delivery |

Also:

• `templates/audit_report.md` — report skeleton the agent fills.
• `forensics_tools/image_dup.py` — perceptual-hash (dHash + aHash) duplicate detector for figure / panel PNGs. Single-purpose pure-Python utility (Pillow only). Catches untransformed dups.
• `forensics_tools/image_dup_orb.py` — ORB feature-matching duplicate detector with horizontal-flip augmentation. Catches **transformed** dups (rotation / flip / crop / brightness change) that perceptual hashing misses. Pair with `image_dup.py`: use phash first, escalate to ORB when phash distance is suspicious-but-inconclusive (16–60 range). Deps: OpenCV + NumPy.
• `forensics_tools/panel_split.py` — whitespace-gutter panel splitter. Pair with `image_dup.py` / `image_dup_orb.py` for cross-panel duplicate detection; whole-figure phash without panel splitting almost never finds anything.
• `forensics_tools/channel_check.py` — RGB channel-content classifier (DAPI / Flag / Merge / other) for fluorescence sub-images. Catches within-panel label swaps (e.g., a "DAPI" sub-image that is actually a Merge); cross-panel phash cannot catch this class.
• `forensics_tools/decimal_match.py` — cross-cell last-N-decimal matching sweeper for source-data XLSX. Detects fabrication where many distinct values share trailing decimal patterns (Kang Tiebang whistleblower class). Single-purpose pure-Python utility (openpyxl only). See `references/02-numerical-evidence.md` Check 1.5.
• `forensics_tools/magnitude_consistency.py` — supplement-text vs source-data XLSX unit/scale consistency. Catches unit-confusion (TWh vs GWh, mM vs µM, MHz vs Hz, etc.) and order-of-magnitude transcription errors via entity-overlap + literal-value matching across a generic SI-prefix-aware unit taxonomy covering energy / power / mass / length / area / volume / time / voltage / current / frequency / pressure / concentration / amount / force / dose / genomics-bp / CO2 / currency. Cross-family pairs (e.g., kV vs TWh) are automatically rejected. Pair with `bilingual_cn_geography.json` (or your own JSON map) for cross-language entity matching. Empirical baseline: Hu et al. 2026 Nature Tongyu county 1000× unit error. See `references/02-numerical-evidence.md` Check 1.6.
• `forensics_tools/xlsx_aggregate_consistency.py` — cross-XLSX same-quantity sum/row consistency. Detects when two source-data tables in the same paper purport to carry the same aggregate quantity but disagree by a small systematic margin (e.g., Hu et al. 2026 Nature MOESM3 vs MOESM6 1110.78 vs 1103.89 TWh, 0.62 percent diff, all 31 provinces same sign). Reuses the unit taxonomy from `magnitude_consistency.py`. Empirical baseline same paper Level 1 finding. See `references/02-numerical-evidence.md` Check 1.7.
• `tests/smoketest.sh` — < 30-second pre-commit gate. Compiles every script, runs every `--help` (catches argparse `%` bugs), and runs positive + negative controls for `decimal_match`, `magnitude_consistency`, and `xlsx_aggregate_consistency`. Run before every change.
• See `forensics_tools/README.md` for the design rule that distinguishes utility scripts from forbidden "skeleton → enrich" orchestration, and for the recommended pipeline.

**Read the relevant reference _before_ writing, not after.** The full audit does not fit in a single turn — `references/00-incremental-execution.md` is the only execution mode that completes.

When to Use

• User hands you a paper (PDF / DOI / arXiv ID) and asks whether the figures / data / logic are trustworthy.
• User wants a quality gate on outputs from a local paper-writer run (slug-based).
• Reviewer / investigator wants a reviewable-evidence document to forward to authors or an integrity body.

When NOT to Use

• User wants to write a paper → `paper-writer`.
• User wants to build / run an experiment → `experiment-suite`.
• User wants a literature survey → `literature-survey`.
• User wants a verdict ("is this fraud?") — this skill produces evidence and grading, neve