Occam's Razor Supports that Hans Niemann did not cheat against Magnus, or in OTB in general.

You have used Occam's Razor (the simplest explanation is usually correct) to argue that Hans did not cheat. One could argue that given, past unethical behavior, and overwhelming statistical analysis Occam's Razor would point to the simple explanation of cheating.

Statistical data according to who? Because it's definitely not Regan, the reigning authority of OTB cheating. 

The statistical data is usually from people with 1/1000th the expertise and knowledge Regan has. 

Again, if there is no evidence Hans cheated, no strange moves in his game against Magnus, etc...then the simplest explanation is he won fair and square.

The simplest explanation is not that he was using a device in a secured area for OTB chess.

The more you type, the more I wonder if you are the same person that tried making this argument on Chessable.

The issue is not the single game against Magnus.  Also, the Sinquefield Cup was not "secured" until after Magnus withdrew - and interestingly enough, Hans' play degraded significantly following that.

But to your conclusion:  You have a decent high school sprinter who disappears for 6 months and comes back and is suddenly crushing Ben Johnson and Usain Bolt in the 100m dash.  Obviously, it is because he was training hard - after all, that is the "simplest" explanation, right?

I do not go to chessable.

I would say that if the high school sprinter passed steroid testing and any other anti cheat methods that it would be likely that he beat Usain Bolt fair and square.

I don't follow running sports like that, but I assume that is a very unlikely scenario and it's not a very good anaology.

The reason it's not a good analogy is because Hans is 2700 and Magnus is 2800. The difference isn't nearly as extreme. 

It is clear that you don’t follow running sports.

As someone who claims to be a physician with a background in chemistry, you most assuredly know that many people work on making custom anabolic cocktails that avoid detection by testing methods at any given time period.

And of course it isn't a good analogy - it refutes your entire argument, so you must dismiss it

Lets assume Hans' rating of 2700 is accurate.  Magnus is ~2860.  The expected result in a 100-game match would be roughly +51=41-8 in favor of Magnus.  So yes, Hans would be expected to do slightly better than someone running against Usain Bolt or Ben Johnson (since you don't keep up with running sports - Usain Bolt is the World Record holder with 8 of the 10 fastest times in history.  Ben Johnson had the Word Record, but later tested positive for steroids, so his record was negated).

However, if you assume his rating of ~2500 is accurate, The expected result in that same match would be +82=16-2.  Considering Hans had 2 nearly flawless games against Magnus in a matter of 2 weeks (and had 4 other nearly flawless games at the FTX Crypto Cup, and the first 2 rounds of the Sinquefield Cup were incredible), you must accept one of 2 scenarios:

1)  Despite having been in a 3+ year rating plateau at the 2400-2500 level, Hans, as a young adult, has managed to figure out a way to dramatically improve faster than any of his contemporaries, and is becoming one of the world's elite players.

2)  Hans has found a way to cheat in key OTB games in order to pump up his rating and get invited to larger events.

Now, before you jump to pick one, go to the St Louis Chess Club YouTube channel and watch the post-game analysis of Hans after rounds 1-4 of the Sinquefield Cup.  Then watch Sam Shankland's post-game analysis after his game with Hans the other day.  Then decide which scenario is more likely.

EDIT:  I should note that there is a 3rd possibility:  Hans has made a Faustian deal.  But no one but me seems to take that option seriously :-P

But it's also irrelevant to my response.

The point is that Hans at 2700 and Magnus at 2800 isn't as large as people are making it seems, and Hans taking a single game of Magnus is hardly anything at all. It's not like he won a best of 14. 

No, your running analogy is just not that concrete.

Also, analogies can be twisted into whatever you want them to be. So in my opinion, it's better to stick the the facts rather than pursue analogies.

Hans is rising, so 2700 might even be underrepresenting his skill.

At one point, Magnus was an IM who drew Kasparov. Someone ranked 700+ in the world drawing the best player.

Did that mean Magnus was cheating? Or did it mean he was a rising star?

Yep, that's right. He was a rising star.

This isn't nearly as extreme, as Hans is ranked in top 50 or so, beating the worlds 1st. A much smaller gap.

You are focusing on the wrong thing. The game he won over Magnus was not even close to the main evidence he cheated. In fact Magnus losing a game to a young guy isn't anything suspicious as he does every now and then. It was merely a trigger that put Hans in the spotlight. Before that it was already consensus he cheated among the small circle of super GMs. Fabi said Magnus was already about to withdraw when Hans got invited to Sinqfield Cup, before they even played. I would go as far as saying even if you proved to me Hans was clean in that specific game, it's still incredibly likely he cheated his way to 2700.

Showing your age there @PawnTsunami - Ben Johnson is now 60 and would likely struggle against any high-school sprinter

But Magnus didn't withdraw until he lost fair and square, so I don't know if there is any bulk to saying he was planning on withdrawing before the tournament started. 

If Magnus would have won, none of this would have been an issue. Therefore, it's hard to take that argument seriously. 

Fabi and other super GMs also said nothing seemed suspicious in that game.

You don't follow chess closely, either.

It is clear you were never involved in any sort of competitive endeavors.

Hans had been stagnant for several years.  If you do not see a sudden improvement after years of stagnation as unusual, I don't know what to tell you.  To say "he is rising" now, ignores the reality in favor of your own biases.

If you watch the Magnus documentary, you see why Magnus drew Kasparov.  Magnus was 13, improving quickly, and Kasparov did not take the game seriously until he realized he wasn't playing some dumb kid, and it was a rapid game (so there wasn't any time to adjust to that reality).  However, if you look at the expected results between their ratings at the time:  Kasparov 2830, Magnus 2484:  the expectation would be +80=17-3.  There is a significantly higher probability of drawing than Magnus winning there.  When you consider that Magnus was playing with White and they traded down into an opposite colored-bishop endgame with a symmetrical structure, it is a drastically different situation.  You didn't see a young Magnus dominating the best players of the previous generation out of nowhere.  There was a progression.

Hans was not even in the top 100 until recently.  In fact, 18 months ago, he had been sitting around #1000 in the world - and had been there for about 3.5 years.  Then, suddenly, he starts winning every other event he enters, including very impressive wins over very strong players (Shirov, Magnus, Mamedyarov, Aronian, etc.).  Which takes me back to the running analogy:  if you had someone who was a decent high school sprinter, and suddenly started crushing world record holders out of nowhere, would you just assume it was because he was working hard?

Hey now!  Who are you calling old!?

I was also going to throw Carl Lewis in there, but kids these days probably have no clue who he is.

It's hard to take a discussion seriously when it starts with someone who claims they're a medical professional mixing up Wikipedia and Webster. Even harder when said scientific professional uses Occam's Razor when, in the scientific method, Occam's razor is not considered an irrefutable principle of logic or a scientific result. Even more difficult when this professional lacks basic knowledge about chess or shows ignorance in their field of study when it's used as an analogy.

Like I said, you have never played in a competitive sport and it is obvious.

If you know you are going into an event with someone who has used PEDs in the past, it messes with your mentality.  Magnus and Nepo both went to the organizers when Hans was announced as Rapport's replacement and asked for increased security measures.  When you have 2 of the top players in the world coming to you and saying "something is off about this one player", perhaps it isn't so obvious that he is "just a rising star".  Even Fabi, as diplomatic as he has tried to remain in this situation, has displayed a rather large level of skepticism about Hans' rating rise being legitimate.

Well, if it bleeds, it leads!

I don't believe you followed the whole thing closely then. For obvious legal reasons Fabi and Nepo said nothing seemed suspicious to the official media, but Fabi said a lot of stuff on podcast and Nepo implied Hans was cheating on his twitch stream.

Nepo's exact wording in the official interview was that the game was "more than impressive".

Personally, I think Nepo's dry humor is underrated - his ability to make a backhanded compliment is at least 2900-level!

Should be pretty easy to google. Nepo said Hans was 'definitely improving, definitely improving'. It was clear he was implying cheating if you listened to context. Also note it was regarding the games they played on chess.com (I don't believe the Hans Magnus game holds any importance other than bringing attention to the situation), before it was shown Hans cheated recently.