UFO Specialists Pollution Anchoring Simulator

Specialist Consultation Chain

Anchoring strength 0.70

Consultation-chain length 8

First specialist's estimate 85 ppb

True contamination

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Final consensus

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Drift from truth

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Unanchored drift

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How it works

A UFO sighting site is checked for airborne contamination by a chain of specialists, consulted one after another. Each specialist privately forms an independent read of the true level, but before answering they've already heard the number the previous specialist gave — and that number acts as an anchor that their stated answer is insufficiently adjusted away from (Tversky & Kahneman, 1974).

stated₁ = firstAnchor
trueᵢ = TRUE + noiseᵢ            (specialist i's private, independent read)
adjustFraction = 1 − anchoringStrength
statedᵢ = anchorᵢ₋₁ + adjustFraction·(trueᵢ − anchorᵢ₋₁)
anchorᵢ = statedᵢ

Anchoring strength — how strongly each specialist clings to the previous number. At 0 every specialist reports their true independent read; near 1 the chain barely moves off the first number at all.
Consultation-chain length — how many specialists are consulted in sequence. A longer chain gives the bias more steps to compound, but also more chances for independent reads to pull it back.
First specialist's estimate — the opening anchor. It is deliberately set far from the true value here to make the pull visible; in reality this could be a first witness's guess, a preliminary report, or a rumor.
Independent (unanchored) chain — the dashed comparison line shows what the same specialists would have reported with no knowledge of prior answers (adjustFraction = 1 for everyone), i.e. the unbiased baseline.

Real-world relevance: sequential "second opinion" consultations — medical diagnoses, expert witnesses, appraisals — are vulnerable to exactly this chain effect whenever a later expert is told what an earlier one concluded before forming their own judgment.

Anchored chain (stated) Independent chain (unbiased) True value First anchor