How a record is made
Every entry in the ledger is a receipt for one claim: the claim in canonical form, a verdict, an evidence grade, and the evidence they rest on. This page explains where each part comes from, what can never influence it, and how a record changes over time.
The verdict: which way the evidence points
A verdict is a statement of direction, nothing more. There are exactly four:
- Supported. The weight of evidence points toward the claim.The bottom of the weighted support range is at 55% or above.
- Contested. The evidence does not settle the claim either way.The bottom of the range is under 55% and its top is over 45%.
- Unsupported. The weight of evidence points against the claim.The top of the weighted support range is at 45% or below.
- Insufficient record. There is not yet enough qualifying evidence to state a direction. This determination comes first: if the evidence base does not meet our sufficiency requirements, no direction is stated at all.
Each study is weighted for its design, its size, how directly it tests the claim, and how independent it is of the others, so the support share is a range, not a single number. Each term is bound to published thresholds on that range, shown above.
The evidence grade: how strong the ground is
A verdict tells you which way the evidence points. The evidence grade tells you how solid the ground is under it.
- Evidence grade (A to F) Starts from how close the best evidence comes to the strongest kind of study the question allows: some questions permit controlled trials, some can only ever be studied by observation. It is lowered when independent groups disagree, when the evidence tests the claim only indirectly, when the weighted range is wide, or when there are signs that unfavorable results went unpublished, and it is raised when several independent groups using different kinds of study agree. The same rules apply to every claim, and a weak evidence base grades low no matter how popular its conclusion.
Grades are letters, never percentages, because a percentage reads as the probability a claim is true, and that is not what a grade measures.
The evidence
Every published record lists its sources in public, on the record: title, authors, year, and a resolvable identifier. The sources come from the scholarly databases themselves, with the titles, years and identifiers those databases hold. Every citation must carry a DOI, an identifier any reader can follow to the paper: a record with a missing, placeholder or malformed identifier cannot publish, and the published pages are checked for the same defect.
What can never touch a score
Who commissioned a verification, and whether anyone did, has no path into the verdict or the grade. Every record states who commissioned or sponsored it.
Public opinion carries zero weight. We measure what people believe about claims, but that data is stored where the scoring system has no ability to read it, and we prove it continuously: the pipeline is run with that data present and with it removed, and the verdict and the grade must be identical to the last bit, or the system fails its own tests.
The classification of a claim into its field is printed on the record, so the standard it was graded against can be inspected, not taken on trust.
How records change
The ledger is append only. A published record can be added to, never rewritten. When new evidence changes a verdict or a grade, the change is made in public, dated, with the triggering evidence named, and the record's full history remains visible. A record found to be in error can be retracted: it leaves public view, but nothing is deleted, and the retraction and its reason are kept in the audit ledger. We treat corrections as a feature of the record, not an embarrassment to it: a ledger that cannot change its entries cannot follow the evidence.
How claims enter verification
Entries advance through continuous prioritization across three paths: editorial selection, reader demand, and sponsorship. Commissioned work is private by default and publishes at the customer's choice, with two permanent rules. A displayed verification mark always requires a published record. And privacy attaches to the engagement, never to the claim: no one can prevent a claim itself from being verified through public demand, and once a record is published, no customer can have it taken down.
What we do not do
We do not decide what is true. A record states which way the evidence points and how strong the ground is; the conclusion remains yours. Responsibility for decisions stays human. We provide the record that makes them defensible.