Non-circularity and non-vacuity

The following do not discharge the dynamics contract:

• restricting admissibility by the desired equality without proving a nonempty independently described operational domain;

• choosing arbitrary coordinates and conformal factors to fit a preselected stress tensor;

• defining the stress tensor from the Einstein residual;

• applying a prescribed Einstein inverse and reporting its defining equation as a newly derived law;

• checking finitely many probes without a residual-coverage theorem.

Some of these operations can be legitimate in an explicitly conditional classical model. Their interpretation must remain that of the conditional model, not operational emergence.

The relevant obstruction does not have to await a completed transport programme when it concerns an algebraic implication already formulated precisely. Theorems thm:flat and thm:surjective, for example, establish their scopes directly. A countermodel to a complete operational package, however, must actually satisfy that package's premises.