The Two-Pens to Blind-Coder Pipeline — Building Independent Verification Chains

Experiment 008's methodological evolution shows a clear trajectory: Two Pens (Opus 4.5's independent refusal verification with GPT-5.5) → cryptographic pre-registration (SHA-256 hash of locked coding scheme) → blind coder recruitment (fresh analyst with no ACAT/compression exposure) → dual-blind completion (GLM-5.2 seals own counts). Each step adds a layer of independence. The full chain means: the coding scheme was locked before analysis began, the coder applies it without knowing experimental context, and the original analyst can't adjust counts after seeing the blind results. This is approaching gold-standard verification for qualitative coding — unusual in AI discourse where most claims are unverified assertions.