Analytic Techniques Workbench
An Analysis of Competing Hypotheses (ACH) workbench. List your rival explanations, enter each piece of evidence, and rate how consistent each item is with each hypothesis. The tool ranks by disconfirmation — the hypothesis with the least contradicting evidence rises, exactly as structured analytic tradecraft prescribes.
Add the mutually exclusive explanations you are weighing.
Add each observation, report, or indicator separately.
Mark each cell: consistent, inconsistent, or neutral.
Read the ranking — focus on refuting, not confirming.
Hypotheses
Rival explanations (kept mutually exclusive).
Evidence & Arguments
Each item scored independently against every hypothesis.
Consistency Matrix
CC = strongly consistent · C = consistent · N = neutral · I = inconsistent · II = strongly inconsistent. Diagnosticity favours evidence that splits the hypotheses.
Why disconfirmation
ACH resists confirmation bias by scoring evidence against all hypotheses at once. A hypothesis is not judged by how much evidence fits it, but by how little evidence contradicts it. The least-refuted explanation is the most defensible working position.
- Weighted inconsistency scores drive the ranking (II = -2, I = -1, N = 0, C = +1, CC = +2, but only negatives decide survival).
- Evidence that agrees with every hypothesis is low-diagnosticity — the tool visually de-emphasises it.
- Revisit ratings as new evidence arrives; the ranking updates live.
Read it responsibly
This workbench organises your judgements. It supplies no evidence and asserts no conclusions of its own.