Observability and institutional gating in historical technology transmission: a preregistered exploratory Silk Road case study

Data, code, scoring rubrics, and verbatim AI scoring prompts for a preregistered exploratory study testing whether an observability score and a transmission-fidelity score covary across n = 26 documented Silk Road transmission cases (material technologies and disease-management practices, ~200 BCE - 1900 CE). A preregistered inter-rater reliability halt fired (fidelity-rubric ICC below 0.70), and a publicly timestamped OSF amendment downgraded all analyses to exploratory status. Reported as a pilot: a time-depth-controlled observability-fidelity rank association (partial Spearman rho = 0.746), a pre-specified two-case institutional-override class (Firth beta = -3.05, reported as a separation diagnostic), and an underpowered disease-tier transparency observation. This version (v4) adds the verbatim AI scoring prompts for both the primary and the blind secondary scorer and the full anchored LSVP+fidelity rubric. Pre-registration: OSF H3D7F (amendment 2026-05-12). Cite the concept DOI 10.5281/zenodo.20170188, which resolves to the latest version.