Maayan Keynan
מעין קינן
Independent Researcher & Innovator

I work at the intersection of information, entropy, and authenticity: how information is structured, and how we can tell when that structure is truly genuine.

About

Measuring order within disorder

My research studies Voronoi entropy and the symmetry of fractal point sets — how the order and disorder in a pattern shift when the symmetry of its generating structure is varied as a controlled parameter. Two findings stand out: entropy shifts sharply at the moment symmetry breaks, and the distribution of cells settles into a constant asymptotic structure.

This is my M.Sc. research in Chemical Engineering at Ariel University, and it continues toward a doctorate.

A theme recurs across this work: what a structure reveals depends on the measure you choose to see it with, and every measure has its blind spots.

From measurement to trust

That one idea has a consequence outside the lab.

We are surrounded by information that looks entirely credible and can't easily be checked: an article resting on research that was never done, a conclusion attributed to researchers who don't exist, an image of a find that was never found.

The common response is to teach people to spot fakes. It doesn't work. The tools that manufacture a convincing lie improve faster than the tools that detect it, and anyone promising certainty is selling confidence that isn't backed — which is more dangerous than not knowing.

What works is calibrated doubt: not fearing doubt, but learning to listen to it. Recognizing the moment something doesn't add up, knowing what can be checked and what can't, and deciding and acting responsibly without full certainty.

Calibrated doubt is not endless suspicion. A doubt earns its rest not when it is proven, but when it can name its parents — when you can show what it came from, and stand behind that in the open.

It is the oldest discipline of the scientist — and of anyone who must decide before the evidence is complete: to work from partial evidence, and know exactly how far it reaches.

Selected Work

Geometric Information Preservation and Entropy Scaling in Voronoi Tessellations: A 25-Point Physical–Computational Investigation
Preprint · Zenodo · 2025
Read on Zenodo →
The Popcorn Metaphor: A Framework for Understanding Order, Entropy, and Phase Transitions in Granular Systems
Preprint · Zenodo · 2026
Read on Zenodo →
Perturbation Landscapes of the Ghost-Cell Encoding: Convention-Dependence, Channel Independence, and Single-Perturbation Reach in a 25-Point Voronoi Tessellation
Preprint · Zenodo · 2026
Read on Zenodo →
Full publication list →

IsReal

IsReal

IsReal grew out of that research.

Rather than labeling something simplistically “real” or “fake,” IsReal examines whether what you're looking at converges into a single coherent whole — and surfaces the ingredients of a doubt: what changed, what doesn't fit, what's missing. It presents them at the decisive moment, just as someone decides whether to trust something and pass it on.

It's built for the pause before sharing — the breath of taking responsibility for what we put into the world. That responsibility belongs to anyone who shares, and it's essential for journalists and fact-checkers, who must stand behind what they publish. The question isn't only whether an image can be trusted — but whether the person sharing it can be.

Two U.S. provisional patent applications have been filed on the underlying geometric methods.

Teaching & Collaboration

I teach calibrated doubt as a working method — for teams whose credibility depends on what they publish: educators, curators, communicators, journalists, fact-checkers.

  • Team workshops — how doubt works as a mechanism, why a good fake passes smoothly and a strange truth feels false, and what to do when information arrives that can't be verified.
  • Learning materials — lesson plans and modules that teach critical thinking through your own material.
  • Public writing — communication that holds both scientific depth and plain, accessible language.

Open to conversation: contact@maayankeynan.com

Approach

Transparency, open knowledge, and the free exchange of ideas.

Elsewhere