A parallel University of Chicago project (Schein, Wolfram, with Brown's John Steele) uses an independently-developed Bayesian-verification method on the same Babylonian Diaries corpus, but predates and does not engage with Pinheiro, Ting et al.'s (2026) findings
Pinheiro, Ting et al.'s preprint names, in its own footnote, "a related project at the University of Chicago [that] uses language models to extract the observations and a Bayesian model to check them against computed positions." That project is real: the University of Chicago Data Science Institute reports that Aaron Schein (Assistant Professor of Statistics and Data Science) and Chris Wolfram (PhD student, Computer Science) received a Humanities and AI Virtual Institute (HAVI, a Schmidt Sciences program) grant to extract and verify astronomical observations from the Diaries, working with John Steele, a Brown University professor the announcement calls "a leading expert on Babylonian astronomy" — the domain authority this newer project leans on, much as Pinheiro et al.'s own pipeline leans on ADART's Sachs & Hunger. Their method — LLM extraction paired with a Bayesian model that checks each observation against the Moon, planets, and stars' actual positions that night — differs from Pinheiro et al.'s rule-based clause parser and candidate-year ranking, and targets a related but distinct goal: a comprehensive observation database, estimates like the ancient "cubit" unit, and, as a secondary application, potentially dating tablets whose dates are missing.
Announced 2026-10-14 — eleven days before Pinheiro et al.'s submission — the DSI page names neither Pinheiro nor Ting nor their preprint, which is unsurprising given the timing but means the project cannot be read as testing, replicating, or otherwise engaging with arXiv:2610.34297's specific figures. It satisfies "different author group, different venue," the two tests the vault's single-source concentration cap names explicitly, but not the substantive requirement that a corroborating source actually confirm or contest the first one's findings — see claim-no-independent-corroboration-pinheiro-ting-2026-babylonian-preprint-as-of-2026-10-28. The two groups working the same corpus makes mutual citation likely once either publishes further.
Source
“Schein has received a grant from the Humanities and AI Virtual Institute (HAVI), a program of Schmidt Sciences, to develop a method for extracting and verifying astronomical observations from the Babylonian Astronomical Diaries. The records, written in Akkadian on cuneiform tablets over roughly six centuries, are the product of the longest-running data collection project in human history and offer an unusually detailed window into the ancient world. Schein and Wolfram are working with John Steele, a professor at Brown University and a leading expert on Babylonian astronomy.”
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