Niome Addresses Miner Score Concerns, Updates Leaderboard

The Niome team clarified that top miner scores of 0.8–0.9 are achievable through optimized performance, not cheating. They explained the simulation design uses intentional allele imbalance and low coverage to create challenge; zero alt reads at some positions is statistically expected, not a flaw. Leaderboard ground truth will be made downloadable for miner verification. Database cleaning removed two stale validations.

• •Top miner scores (0.8–0.9) are legitimate; perfect 1.0 scores undergo careful review.
• •Simulation consistency confirmed: variants injected into haplotypes; reads generated from same source.
• •Zero alt reads at low-haplotype-fraction het sites is expected statistical outcome by design.
• •Leaderboard ground truth now downloadable for miner verification; database cleaned of stale entries.