Fact Checking

---
name: fact-checking
description: Fact-check editorial content by identifying verifiable claims, tracing them to primary or authoritative sources, checking dates and context, resolving conflicts, and separating fact from inference or opinion.
---
# Fact Checking

Use before publishing content that makes factual claims whose accuracy affects reader trust or decisions.

## Procedure
1. Mark every externally verifiable claim, number, date, quote, name, causal statement, product capability, law, study result, and current-status assertion.
2. Prioritize claims by consequence and likelihood of being wrong or outdated.
3. Trace important claims to primary sources or the most authoritative available evidence; use secondary sources for context and cross-checking.
4. Verify that quoted or paraphrased evidence supports the exact claim in context rather than a stronger interpretation.
5. Check publication date, data period, version, geography, population, units, methodology, and whether the source has since been superseded.
6. Resolve conflicting sources by examining authority, recency, methodology, and scope and state uncertainty when conflict remains.
7. Distinguish verified fact, estimate, inference, prediction, and opinion in the final language.
8. Preserve source links or references and a record of material corrections made during review.

## Decision rules
- A citation beside a sentence is not proof the source supports the sentence.
- Current claims require current evidence.
- Do not upgrade correlation into causation.
- When precision exceeds the evidence, narrow the claim rather than search for a convenient source.

## Quality gate
The content is fact-checked when consequential claims trace to appropriate evidence, dates and scope match the language, conflicts and uncertainty are represented honestly, quotes preserve context, and unsupported assertions have been corrected or removed.