Parametrized reduction from 3-SAT to Independent Set to lower bound running time under ETH assumption I want to prove that, assuming Exponential Time Hypothesis is true, there is no algorithm that solves Independent Set in $2^{o(|V|+|E|)}$ time. I want to apply the following strong parameterized many-one reduction $f$ from 3-Sat to Independent set. Let $\psi$ be the input to 3-SAT with parameter $\kappa_{3-SAT} = \#variables + \# clauses$ and let $(G=(V,E),k)$ be the input for Independent Set with parameter $\kappa_{IS} = |V| + |E|$

For every clause in the input formula $\psi$, add three vertices to the Graph, corresponding the the respective literals. Add an edge between two vertices if:

a) They correspond to literals in the same clause or

b) they correspond to a variable and its inverse

Then 3-Sat has a satisfying assignment if and only if the graph defined by this reduction has an independent set of size $m$, where $m$ is the number of clauses in $\psi$. For example:


I am now wondering whether this reduction suffices to show that (assuming ETH), Independent Set cannot be solved in $2^{o(|V|+|E|)}$ time. If I understand correctly, the number of vertices $|V| = 3m$ and the number of edges $|E| \leq 3m+nm$, since for each clause, we have $3$ edges between the respective vertices and then for each variable we have at most $m$  edges between a variable and its inverse. However, this is not linear in $\kappa_{3-Sat}$ anymore. 

Is my upper bound on the numer of edges wrong or do I a different reduction to show the desired result?
First, let me remark that $n=O(m)$ as in each clause only $3$ variables may appear, and that $m=O(n^3)$ without loss of generality as there can be at most $(2n)^3$ clauses up to repetition.

Your bound is not correct. Consider the case where some variable $X$ occurs positive in half the clauses and negative in the other half. This leads to roughly $\frac{m^2}{4}$ edges for $X$ alone. What is correct, however, is your suspicion that the parameter dependence is superlinear.

The reduction can be modified such that $|V|=3m+2n$ and $|E|=6m+n$. This would lead to a linear dependence of $k_{IS}$ on $k_{3-SAT}$. Consequently, with these parameterizations, independent set does not have a subexponential algorithm unless 3-SAT has.

However, there appears to be a further problem: The ETH uses a different parameterization. Namely just the number of variables, disregarding the number of clauses. I am not an expert in ETH. Possibly the sparsification lemma can help here.