PhAB Observatory

Author: Prasanna Varun Karmarkar, Independent Researcher, Hyderabad, India. ORCID: 0009-0006-2284-6914

Live tool: phab-observatory.onrender.com Manuscript status: submitted to Sports Medicine (Springer); under proposal review at European Journal of Applied Physiology. Not yet peer reviewed or published. Nothing in this repository or the live tool should be treated as an established scientific conclusion. OSF registration: Construct Equivalence Audit of Physiological Activity Burden — methodology and search strategy registered prior to peer review (registration, not preregistration — see the registration itself for that distinction stated explicitly).

This repository is the companion dataset, interactive reference implementation, and full supporting materials for "Physiological Activity Burden: Identification of an Unoccupied Ontological Position in the Scientific Literature" — a paper arguing that no existing scientific construct integrates capacity-relative physiological and biomechanical demand while remaining distinct from subjective effort.

Where everything is

• manuscript_materials/ — the complete supplementary record: six canonical construct-family monographs (S1-S6), the full search strategy and exclusion log (S7), a monograph-to-matrix traceability appendix (S8), and a formal hostile-review register documenting every objection raised against the methodology and how it was resolved, including post-submission external review (S9).
• data/feats/ — the companion dataset backing the live tool, as human-readable YAML.
• app/ — the Streamlit application source.
• scripts/build_db.py — regenerates the tool's database from the YAML source of truth.

What the live tool is (and isn't)

This is not a PhAB calculator. The paper it accompanies deliberately makes an existence claim only and does not propose a formula. The tool exists to make that argument concrete and falsifiable:

• Compare Feats — rate any collected feat on every existing metric (MET, capacity-relative physiological demand, Envelope of Function, Perceived Exertion) side by side, extending the paper's Table 0.
• Tensor Playground — apply several naive methods for collapsing real, measured directional force data into a single number, and watch them disagree — an interactive version of the paper's Section 5.4 disclosed open problem.
• Admin — run the validation/build scripts, inspect raw feat data, and audit the dataset's verification-tier honesty.

Status

Three feats fully populated (Fosbury Flop, sub-2-hour marathon pace, elite powerlifting squat), one narrative placeholder (Sabastian Sawe's 2026 sub-2-hour marathon — historic, but too recent for peer-reviewed data to exist yet). See data/feats/*.yaml for full details and citations.

Setup

pip install -r requirements.txt
python3 scripts/build_db.py
streamlit run app/app.py

Architecture

Source of truth is always the YAML files in data/feats/ — never edit phab_observatory.db directly. It is a disposable, fully regenerable build artifact:

data/feats/*.yaml  --[scripts/build_db.py]-->  phab_observatory.db  -->  Streamlit app

This mirrors the pattern used in the author's other public-data projects: human-editable, git-diffable source of truth; generated database as a query layer, never hand-edited.

Verification tiers

Every metric in every feat file carries an explicit verification_status. See scripts/build_db.py's VALID_VERIFICATION_TIERS for the full list. The Admin page's verification-tier audit shows the current breakdown across the whole dataset — this is a deliberate, visible honesty mechanism, not a footnote.

Contributing a new feat

1. Create a new .yaml file in data/feats/ following the structure of existing files.
2. Every value must carry an explicit verification_status — see the Admin page in the running app for the template and current valid tiers.
3. Run python3 scripts/build_db.py --validate-only to check before opening a PR.
4. Prefer primary-source citations; if only secondary sources are available, triangulate across at least two independent ones before using confirmed_via_triangulated_independent_secondary_sources, and say so explicitly in the note field.

Research programme

This is the first paper in a four-part programme applying the same standard of evidence throughout:

1. Existence (this repository) — does the ontological gap exist?
2. Determinants — a systematic review of PhAB's empirical determinants.
3. Theoretical framework — organizing those determinants, including resolution of the tensor-scalar integration problem disclosed in Section 5.4.
4. Operationalization — quantitative measurement, blocked on (3).

Papers 2-4 are in progress and not yet public.