Glossary / Canonical epistemic failure modes
Null-result omission
Null-result omission is the downstream operational failure where a system drops the fact that a relevant search, test, or retrieval returned nothing, and proceeds as if the absence were irrelevant. Null-Result Asymmetry names the measured pattern; null-result omission names the operational failure it produces, where absence-based evidence is dropped from the output.
How it manifests · Measured
The operational consequence of Null-Result Asymmetry, which we measured in the matched-vignette benchmark: a clean negative result, a search that returned nothing, or a test that found no issue gets dropped from the output, leaving the reader unable to act on the absence.
Evidence: Asymmetric Burden of Proof
Related terms
- Null-Result Asymmetry · Canonical epistemic failure modes
- Silent AI failure mode · Core concepts