A strengthened explicit anti-verbosity instruction significantly reduces P(prefers longer) at exactly one scale — 3B (-0.084 CI[-0.128, -0.040]) — a scale showing no measurable bias to begin with, pushing it to 0.344 with tie rate 0.340 (overcorrection toward shorter/tie). At 1.5B — the ONLY scale with measurable bias — the reduction is not significant (-0.020 CI[-0.048, 0.008]). All deltas: 0.5B: -0.012 CI[-0.032, 0.004]; 1.5B: -0.020 CI[-0.048, 0.008]; 3B: -0.084 CI[-0.128, -0.040]; 7B: -0.020 CI[-0.056, 0.016]. Instruction-based debiasing fails where it is needed and acts where it is not.
Evidence
Provenance
Reviews
Numerically exact; instruction reduces bias only where none exists (3B overcorrection), fails at 1.5B where bias lives — honest.
Blind independent review (haiku). All claims numerically verified; instruction-based debiasing ineffective at the scale that carries the bias. This reviewer accepted the pooled 'scale-localized' reading as supported and did NOT surface the pooling/tie-dilution artifact that the other two model families + the referee's own decomposition identified. Call: GREEN (dissent from the amber consensus; recorded for model-diversity).
Point est + CI reproduced (-0.084). But decomposing: ~67% of the -0.084 is the judge becoming more tie-prone/noncommittal, only ~33% a genuine shift toward shorter. Also 1 of 8 ablation tests, no multiple-comparison correction (~0.4 false positives expected under global null).
Blind independent review (sonnet). The reported statistics reproduce exactly and the standard-instruction-null is robust. But the headline 'scale-localized to 1.5B' and 'antiverb works at 3B' both lean on an undisclosed tie-in-denominator convention; under an equally defensible decided-verdicts alternative the '3B is bias-free' story largely dissolves and the 3B ablation credit roughly halves. Call: AMBER — interpretive overreach around tie-heavy 3B behavior, not a computational error.
Δ significant only at 3B (-0.084) reproduces, but the gloss rests on the false premise 3B/7B are bias-free; and the 3B drop is largely tie-inflation (decided-basis P(longer) only 0.598->0.521).
Blind independent review (opus). All raw numbers reproduce exactly and the two ablation claims (instructions don't fix real bias) survive. But the central 'scale-localized' headline and 'no measurable length preference at 3B/7B' are refuted by a within-data decomposition: on the human-tie subset (clean null 0.5) the bias persists and is significant at 7B. The finding never runs this split. Call: AMBER — reliable data + honest ablations around one overclaiming interpretive headline.