fact-verification

name	fact-verification
description	Verify scientific claims, political statements, and environmental assertions against evidence

Fact Verification

Purpose

Systematically verify factual claims using evidence retrieval, source evaluation, and logical reasoning.

Key Datasets

• PolitiFact (Jinyan1/PolitiFact): Political statements rated on 6-level truth scale (True, Mostly True, Half True, Mostly False, False, Pants on Fire)
• Climate-FEVER (tdiggelm/climate_fever): Climate claims labeled SUPPORTS/REFUTES/NOT_ENOUGH_INFO with evidence sentences

Protocol

1. Claim decomposition — Break complex claims into atomic verifiable statements
2. Evidence retrieval — Search authoritative sources for each sub-claim
3. Source evaluation — Assess source credibility and potential bias
4. Evidence-claim alignment — Determine if evidence supports, refutes, or is insufficient
5. Verdict synthesis — Aggregate sub-verdicts into overall assessment

Verification Categories

• Scientific claims: Published findings, statistical assertions, causal claims
• Political statements: Policy claims, historical assertions, statistical citations
• Environmental claims: Climate data, pollution metrics, biodiversity assertions
• Health claims: Treatment efficacy, risk factors, epidemiological data

Verdict Scale

• VERIFIED: Multiple independent high-quality sources confirm
• LIKELY TRUE: Evidence supports but limited independent confirmation
• MIXED: Partially true with important caveats or context
• LIKELY FALSE: Evidence contradicts but some ambiguity remains
• FALSE: Clear evidence contradicts the claim
• UNVERIFIABLE: Insufficient evidence to determine

Rules

• Always cite specific evidence for each verdict
• Distinguish between factual errors and misleading framing
• Check for cherry-picked statistics or out-of-context quotes
• Consider temporal context (claim may have been true when made)