evaluate-source-credibility

name	evaluate-source-credibility
category	school
description	Assess whether a source is fit to support a particular claim by examining provenance, methods, incentives, context, and corroboration. Use when research quality or trust is uncertain.

evaluate-source-credibility

Credibility is claim-specific. Replace a single reputation score with an evidence-backed assessment of fitness for use.

When to use

• Use for articles, datasets, experts, institutional reports, social posts, studies, documents, and generated content.
• Increase scrutiny when the claim is consequential, surprising, precise, or difficult to reverse.
• Distinguish expertise, direct knowledge, methodological quality, and independence.

Procedure

1. State the exact claim the source is expected to support and the consequence of being wrong.
2. Establish provenance: author, publisher, date, version, funding, conflicts, corrections, and chain of custody.
3. Determine how the source could know: direct observation, measurement, experiment, record access, synthesis, opinion, or repetition.
4. Inspect methods, definitions, sample or case selection, missing data, analysis, and uncertainty.
5. Check whether the evidence shown supports the strength and scope of the conclusion.
6. Identify incentives, editorial controls, peer or expert review, and plausible manipulation or selection pressures.
7. Seek independent corroboration and explain whether sources are genuinely independent or share an upstream origin.
8. Assign a claim-specific disposition: usable, usable with caveats, background only, or not reliable enough. Record the reasons.

Failure plan

• Do not equate prestige, polish, virality, credentials, or domain suffix with reliability.
• Do not reject a source solely for disclosed interests; evaluate how controls and evidence address them.
• If methods or provenance cannot be inspected, reduce confidence rather than filling gaps.
• Separate fabricated identity, weak method, outdated context, and ordinary disagreement.

Done

• The assessment names the claim, evidence path, method, incentives, limitations, and corroboration
• The disposition is proportional to risk and does not exceed what was inspected
• Uncertainty and unresolved provenance are preserved for the final synthesis