What we got wrong
Dated, in order, with the size of each error. Withdrawals are in the same list as everything else — a correction filed somewhere quieter than the claim is not a correction.
- Entries
- 23
- Most recent
- 2026-08-29
- Outright withdrawals
- 2 — figures and claims pulled entirely, not adjusted
- The standard
- Not “we updated a figure” but “the figure was 7.9× high, here is why, here is the corrected one”.
- What retraction means here
- A public, reasoned status. Never a deletion. Every corrected page stays at its address with the change printed on it.
Where most of these came from
An adversarial audit of our own published data on 2026-08-26. It found more than we expected, and every finding is either fixed below or listed as still open.
An empty log would not mean nothing was wrong
It would mean nothing wrong had been found yet.
An adversarial audit of our own published data on 2026-08-26. It found more than we expected, and every finding is either fixed below or listed as still open.
An empty log would not mean nothing was wrong
It would mean nothing wrong had been found yet.
A few entries below name our internal codes for the datasets involved — TT-001, TT-010 — and read as jargon because they are. They are kept exactly as they were published: editing a correction after the fact is not a correction.
2026-08-29 · the duty column was named for the wrong thing
/data/tariff-burden.csv called its duty column duty_collected_usd.
The figure is Census CAL_DUT_MO — duty assessed at entry, not cash the Treasury
received; the two differ by anti-dumping and countervailing duties, fees, and
entry-month against cash-month — the same distinction the reconciliation correction
below turns on. duty_assessed_usd is canonical from
2026-08-29 and takes the old column’s position. duty_collected_usd remains,
byte-identical, until at least 2027-03-01, so nothing parsing the file breaks.
2026-08-29 · “Nothing published rests on it” — false
TT-001’s retirement notice said nothing published rested on its archive. Seven Event
Atlas studies do. The archive was always retained; the sentence dismissing it is withdrawn.
2026-08-29 · six studies cite vessel data they never used
A recurrence of the 2026-08-10 correction below — the fix reached seven duty studies and
not six Census-only ones. Citation error; no values affected.
2026-08-29 · the privacy page over-discloses a dependency we removed
Automatic PDF reading was switched off because it sent the 7501 to Google’s Gemini,
but /privacy and the upload door went on saying it does. Both were
corrected later the same day: nothing goes to Google, and /privacy now states what it
previously said — what actually happens.
2026-08-29 · we cannot tell a human from a scanner, and said we could
We quoted roughly 130 human visitors a day. 130 of 131 “human” referrals geolocate to
one city, one page each, and 84 hits to a WordPress install path counted as human on a site that
has never run WordPress. Withdrawn, with everything drawn from it.
2026-08-28 · the rule gap does not predict recoverable money
Pre-registered and failed: ρ +0.251, p = 0.178, beaten by sorting on duty paid. The homepage
no longer leads with the gap. The full result.
2026-08-26 · gateway import weight was 7.9× overstated
The series summed exports, overlapping country groupings and the grand total on top of the
parts: 2026-06 served 113,974,843 t against a true 14,420,392 t. It fed the CSV,
every port page and a cross-check. Fixed.
2026-08-26 · gateway calls counted rows its own builder had excluded
279 corrected to 176 — a 58% overcount. The query ignored the exclusion column.
2026-08-26 · a cargo series withdrawn outright
tt001.us-gateways.cargo-worked, open-ended: no zone filter at all (Chennai rows inside a
“US gateways” series), 27% of metres unit-flip artefacts, two-thirds of rows outside
any terminal. Its promise — “undercounts and never invents” — was false.
2026-08-26 · refund-exposure figures withdrawn in full
$317,751, $1,160,167 and $612,303 are withdrawn. Re-scoring the same book on the corrected
engine gives $0 above schedule and −$98,515 below: the method read declared exemptions as
shortfalls. The error patterns stand; only the dollars are withdrawn.
2026-08-26 · “reconciled to Treasury” was two claims fused into one
0.000% over 114/114 months is a completeness check against Census’s own total, not a
reconciliation; and the claimed 0.89–1.03 Treasury ratio was not reproducible by any
statistic. The honest band against gross is 0.85–0.95.
The corrected page.
2026-08-26 · a self-issued 5/5 fact-check rating, on about a thousand pages
The structured data rated a claim whose own author was Trimtab, at 5 of 5. Schema.org models that
as an independent review. Deleted everywhere.
2026-08-26 · the tariff lookup served the oldest month as the latest
An ascending array read at index zero. One code and origin returned 39.58% for 2026-04 from one
tool and 41.07% for 2026-06 from another — same question, two answers.
2026-08-26 · “measures in force” renamed, because it was not
37.5% of serveable rows were provisions already legally dead by our own canon. The key is
now candidate_measures and its caveat leads with false presence.
2026-08-25 · Entry Check called lawful filings contradictions
“Same HTS filed two ways” fired on splits CBP itself prescribes. Three customers
saw it. One headline asserted $36,639 turned on which was correct, assuming the highest rate
applied to every line. Engine fixed; every live report rescored.
2026-08-11 · “three places that cannot collude” corrected
Source independence overstated: the port record and the duty receipts share a body (US Census).
Wording error; no values affected.
2026-08-10 · Treasury series carried Census provenance
tt010.national.customs-kept/-refunds named Census as source; the source is US Treasury, MTS
Table 4. Provenance is now bound per-series. No values affected.
2026-08-10 · seven duty studies cited vessel data they never used
Atlas citation blocks carried AIS boilerplate on TT-010 receipt studies. Citations are now
generated per-study. No values affected.
2026-08-10 · tariff-wall teaser inverted the mechanism
The teaser said the gap narrowed “by raising the top”; the study shows the rich set
rose 6.3× toward the wall. Cambodia’s figure also corrected 13.7% → 13.8%.
2026-08-10 · pre-registration deviations disclosed on TT-010
K2 ran 12 of 20 registered spot cells; K1b’s 0.89 ratio sits outside the registered
±10% band. Both stand, now flagged as deviations rather than silent passes.
2026-08-06 · F-001 scope amendment
Narrowed to the vessel-call series specifically: PortWatch’s own tonnage estimates never
showed the collapse. Original text preserved on the finding.
2026-07 · berthings per day, corrected 745 → 35
Tugboats and workboats dominated the raw event feed; the honest merchant figure was 35.
2026-07 · 21 of 99 carrier attributions retracted
A name rule matched the Catalina Express passenger fleet as Hapag-Lloyd. Attribution is now gated
on merchant characteristics; a name rule alone is never enough.
One deliberate exception, stated so it is not mistaken for a silent removal: on 2026-08-29 a large number of machine-generated pages were deleted outright rather than retracted. They carried no claim anybody had read. Withdrawn claims still stay resolvable at their own addresses, with their reasons, always.
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