Bulk tissue nitrite alone does not identify eNOS/iNOS source contributions: A partial-identification audit of garlic-oil responses under lead exposure

Two publicly unlinked mouse reports using lead nitrate and garlic essential oil described higher cardiac and lower renal tissue-homogenate nitrite in the high-dose group. The reported lead-plus olive-oil groups serve only as nominal vehicle references; causal comparability is not assumed. We audited provenance, reconstructed an unadjusted aggregate heart contrast, and performed an exact tissue-specific partial-identification analysis. In a deliberately favorable model, each tissue total is a nonnegative weighted sum of effective eNOS- and iNOS-attributed contributions. The sharp interval for a high-dose-minus-reference source contrast is [−y0/ak,y1/ak]. It contains both signs for every y0, y1 > 0: the numerical observations determine interval endpoints, not the qualitative impossibility. The reported values give [−2.24,6.29] in heart and [−1.43,0.7162] in kidney for either unit-response component. Strictly positive tissue-specific allocations reproduce each pair of means while reversing the heart-eNOS and kidney-iNOS target signs. Thus these bulk observations identify neither source level nor source-effect sign, but they also do not falsify the biological hypothesis. Executable certificates, external-fraction sensitivity bounds, and a prospective pathway-coherence design framework specify what additional restrictions or experiments would be needed; literal pool partition requires a validated source-selective measurement.