Tier 0 produces the documented year-over-year decline in dataset survival by default

Tier 0 — a single copy on a single system in a single location, with no replication, no geographic redundancy, and no verification beyond the storage medium — is the architecture that produces the ~17%-per-year decline in conditional dataset survival documented by Vines 2014 (E-0005). The decline is not an unexplained empirical regularity; it is the structural output of the architecture most research data is stored on.

When the grant ends, the principal investigator moves, the laptop is replaced, or the hardware fails, the data migrates through manual effort or it does not migrate at all. Each of those events is routine. Each of them is absorbed by Tier 0 as a preservation event the architecture is not equipped to handle. The cumulative consequence is the C-0002 baseline: 73-93% of published research carries data that cannot be produced on request.

Tier 0 is the default architecture of most research data. The default outcome — single-event loss on every routine operational event the institution experiences — is what the empirical record measures.

Counterclaim opportunity: any case in which Tier 0 storage produced multi-decade preservation without external intervention would oppose this Claim. The paper does not present such cases. The empirical record's pattern is consistent with Tier 0 producing default loss across the cohort age distribution.