Scott Alexander gave a 50% probability that he would get at least one article published on a major site such as Huffington Post, Vox or New Statesman in 2017.

Judge whether the event happened; the 50% probability is not part of the test. True: at least one article written by Scott Alexander (under that name or byline, or credited to him as author) was published in calendar 2017 on a major general-audience outlet comparable to Huffington Post, Vox or New Statesman (for example a national newspaper or magazine website with a large readership). A guest post, op-ed or adapted essay counts if it appears on the outlet's own site under his authorship. Mostly true: the only such piece is on a site of somewhat smaller but still widely recognised national standing. Mostly false: his work was only republished without his authorship credit, quoted, or written about by others on such sites, or the piece appeared only in early 2018. False: his 2017 annual prediction review, or a bibliography of his 2017 writing, shows no such article, and no such article dated 2017 can be found on those outlets.

Set before the research began.

1. E1 2017 Predictions: Calibration Results Slate Star Codex (Scott Alexander's blog) · 2 January 2018 Own record

   “Strikethrough’d are false. Intact are true. Italicized are getting thrown out because I can’t decide if they’re true or not.”

2. E2 Scott Alexander New Statesman

   “PETA, Ferguson, jihad, Doctor Who, rape, and kitten pics: the toxoplasma of online rage”

E2 is Scott Alexander's own 2017 calibration review. The copy we have explains the strikethrough key for marking predictions false, but the markings themselves are missing, so it doesn't show how he scored the major-site prediction. E3 is a New Statesman author page that lists a piece under his name, but the quote gives no publication date, so it doesn't show that the article came out in 2017. Neither item shows whether he had an article on a major outlet in calendar 2017.