Press Conference Revision Evidence Bound

Evidence-Bound Press-Conference Revision

Treat a paper as a clear academic presentation of its best supported contribution, not as a work log or a self-audit. Reframe defensiveness; never remove the information that lets readers judge what the evidence supports.

Non-negotiable distinction

Do not treat a cue word as a verdict. The target is rhetorical defensiveness, not scholarly caution.

• Cut, compress, or reframe self-deprecation, anticipatory answers to objections the manuscript has not invited, redundant hedge stacks, process-log narration, and negative judgments broader than the evidence.
• Keep or relocate a real scope condition, source-status distinction, rival explanation, contradiction, negative finding, ethical caveat, or method limitation whenever it changes how the claim must be read.
• When uncertain, retain the wording and register a query. Do not convert possible to certain, report to observation, authorization to delivery, sequence to mechanism, or a bounded case result to a general law.

Read references/triage-and-regression.md before classifying candidates. For the Dalian Urban Geography manuscript, also read references/urban-geography-guardrails.md before any diagnosis or revision.

Required inputs and authority order

Collect the smallest current set of materials needed for the task:

1. the latest clean manuscript and, for a revision pass, its tracked baseline;
2. the current manuscript lock and any later author-authorized departure from it;
3. current author decisions and unresolved queries;
4. target-journal guidance and any supplied corpus/style calibration;
5. the source principles and prior audit/return records, as context rather than evidence.

Apply this order: manuscript evidence and active author decisions → lock and claim ceiling → verified journal guidance → corpus-level rhetorical calibration → this skill. Do not use a corpus as a phrase bank or let a style preference override a source status.

Phase 0 — create a contribution-and-scope contract

Before scanning, write a compact contract. Do not edit until it is complete.

If the hierarchy, evidence ceiling, or editing authority is unclear, stop after the diagnostic register and request a decision.

Phase 1 — batch diagnostic (read-only)

Read the whole manuscript once for section roles and the contribution contract. Then make a candidate register; do not revise prose in this phase.

1. Optionally run scripts/scan_defensive_cues.py on the clean DOCX to create a candidate list only. Inspect every result in context; the script makes no rhetorical or evidentiary decision.
2. Review every prose-bearing paragraph, including title, abstract, introductions, discussion, conclusion, captions, notes, and references only where they affect visible prose.
3. Classify each candidate using the taxonomy in references/triage-and-regression.md.
4. Record the candidate in a copy of assets/defensive-writing-audit-template.csv or an equivalent table. Include its evidentiary function, source-status tag, contribution relation, and provisional disposition.
5. Mark non-defensive but load-bearing language as KEEP; this makes the integrity decision auditable rather than invisible.

Allowed dispositions are KEEP, TIGHTEN, REFRAME, RELOCATE, CUT, and QUERY. A CUT must remove rhetoric only, never a factual proposition, citation function, evidence status, rival, or scope limit.

Phase 2 — concentrated revision (only with authority)

Revise by pattern group and section role, not by a blind word hunt. Use tracked changes when the manuscript is under review.

1. Start with the abstract, introduction, discussion, and conclusion: make the problem, gap, distinctive analytical move, evidence-bound finding, and payoff legible before qualifications appear.
2. In theory and methods, replace self-defence with precise positioning, but keep definitions, scope, evidence-status distinctions, and analytical rivals.
3. In empirical sections, retain contradictions, delay, non-adoption, reversal, and negative findings when they are the data or explain the mechanism. Remove only authorial apology or unnecessary rehearsal of a limitation.
4. Keep a contribution sentence standing in each major section. A later qualifier may narrow it; it may not erase it or turn the paragraph into a response to a hypothetical reviewer.
5. For every changed sentence, run the three-part preservation test: (a) same or narrower claim, (b) same source-status distinction, and (c) same citation/quotation role.
6. Route a change to QUERY if it would alter research questions, terminology, hierarchy, evidence, citation role, table/figure text, paragraph order, or a real methodological limitation.

Never solve a mismatch by adding evidence, strengthening a causal verb, or extending a case-specific statement into a general claim.