| “Use the gold-standard design” | Strength is question-, threat-, and feasibility-relative; one family cannot expose every error. | Compare serious options by the exact criticism demand. |
| “The protocol is the design” | A template can serialize choices without justifying them. | Record the question-to-evidence relation, alternatives, threats, and selection rule first. |
| “Evidence is incomplete, therefore study” | An unresolved claim does not select a useful obtainable acquisition. | Compare the whole burden and contribution; return QualifiedNoNewStudy when the current allocation closes without a new study. |
| “No budget, therefore evidence sufficient” | Resource refusal is not an epistemic conclusion. | Preserve the bounded answer or unresolved question in QualifiedNoNewStudy when no current study is selected; resource and receiving decisions remain with their owners. |
| “Select provisionally and validate later” | A missing mechanism, measure, access, safety, or authority result may overturn the family. | Return ResearchDesignHold with the exact owner result and forked consequences. |
| “Everything must be fixed before selection” | Some implementation details cannot change the selected relation. | Prove invariance across the bounded admissible values and record PostSelectionNeed. |
| “Two software packages are two designs” | Tool variation may leave evidence and criticism unchanged. | Require an answer-changing relation, threat, or refusal difference. |
| “Mixed means stronger” | Components can disagree, duplicate bias, or lack a warranted integration relation. | Name each component’s irreducible role and the rule for disagreement or failure. |
| “A rerun is a replication” | Code/data/environment reproduction, new-data replication, validation, and robustness test different claims. | Name the live threat and select the credibility move that bears on it. |
| “The selected design authorizes the study” | Design justification does not grant access, safety, ethics, rights, resources, or receiving authority. | Keep every external owner result and later decision separate. |