Match the check to the claim

What counts as an authoritative source depends on the claim. A total is checked against the figures, a quote against the document it came from, a date against whoever sets it. So the first step is to read an answer as a set of separate claims, then give each claim the check that fits. Figure 12.1 sets out five kinds of claim and the check for each.

Try it: pick a claim, then pick how you would check it.

A number. If you have the figures, redo the math. A model predicts digits the way it predicts words, so a total can read perfectly and still be off. A spreadsheet or a calculator settles it in a minute.

A quote or a named source. Open it and find the words yourself. A real-looking reference can still point to the wrong thing. In Ayinde, one invented decision came with a genuine citation number, but the number belonged to an unrelated case about a charity’s business rates.² In the same way, a real section number in a handbook doesn’t make the sentence attributed to it real.

A date, a name or a plain fact. Look it up somewhere you already trust, such as the organization’s own site or schedule, rather than asking the same tool again. Professional fact-checkers do this by habit. A study compared 10 fact-checkers, 10 historians with Ph.D.s and 25 Stanford undergraduates as they judged websites, and the fact-checkers did best.³ They “read laterally, leaving a site after a quick scan and opening up new browser tabs” to see what others said about it. They reached better-supported conclusions in a fraction of the time.³ With an AI answer, reading laterally means the same thing: leave the answer and see what other sources say.

A judgment about a person. “This applicant is the strongest fit” is not a fact you can look up. It is a judgment, and a person who knows the job should make it and be able to explain it. Chapter 14 returns to decisions like this one.

The nurse in the survey did all of this in one move. She checked medical claims against the source her hospital trusts for medical claims.

The hardest claim: that something is missing

One kind of claim needs its own warning. “The contract has no termination clause.” “Nothing in the policy covers remote work.” “There are no other studies on this.” A claim that something exists can be checked by finding it. A claim that something is missing can’t be checked from the answer at all, because the thing you would need to see isn’t there. You have to go to the original and search it yourself, for every word the missing thing might use: terminate, termination, cancel, notice. Only then can you say it is absent.

Omissions hide inside summaries too. A summary of a forty-page document is a set of choices about what to leave out, and a fluent summary gives no sign of what it dropped. If something would matter to you, such as a deadline, a penalty or an exception, search the original for it. Don’t assume the summary would have mentioned it.

Check more when more is at stake

Not every answer needs every check. A list of dinner ideas needs none. A number going to your board, a quote in a published report, or anything that touches a person’s health, money or job needs the full treatment. A useful question is who would be hurt if this were wrong, and how badly.

Many workers in the survey said that the chance of a costly mistake was what made them stop and think, as it was for the pharmacist facing a review.⁴ The researchers add a caution. A skill used only in emergencies gets rusty, they note, so “it is risky for users to only apply critical thinking in high-stakes situations.”⁴ Small, everyday checks keep the habit ready for the day it matters.

This book holds itself to the same rule. Every fact in it carries a numbered note naming its source, so you can check the book the way this chapter suggests checking anything else.