Real reference, absent claim
In a fictional case, a page lacks the reported figure. Mark the claim unestablished and locate the exact table; domain identity does not validate it.
In-depth practical guides
Verify an AI summary before using it
Link important claims to source passages and check numbers, versions, omissions and uncertainty.
Updated :
Summary and sources side by side. Illustrative scene.
Does the text summarise documents or add conclusions?
Fluent summaries may invent references, misattribute facts or add unsupported links. The NIST generative AI profile addresses confabulation risk. This method checks reading and provenance, not truth by writing style.
Split claims
Identify statements about facts, numbers, causation or identity. Separate document statements from inference; prioritise claims affecting the decision.
Open cited items
Check title, author, identifier, date and version. Find the exact supporting passage; an existing URL alone is not evidence.
Recalculate and compare
Check units, denominators, periods and change signs. Review negations, qualifications, excluded populations and association versus causation.
Expose differences
Mark claims supported, contradicted or unestablished in the corpus. Revise or seek another item; retain original output and correction reasons.
Situations and decisions
Typical situations for preparing a check. They do not describe completed assignments or actual observations.
Lost qualification
An illustrative summary changes “in this sample” to “in all cases”. Restore population and limits even if the sentence becomes less categorical.
Record to retain
- Original output and production context
- Claims and source passages
- Recalculated values and versions
- Differences, correction, owner and date
Official references
Related source profiles
Related protocols
Checks before reaching a conclusion
- Does each important fact have a passage?
- Were numbers recalculated?
- Are population limits retained?
- Is inference separate from source content?
A claim, passage, version and decision matrix with corrected text.
Frequently asked questions
Do several cited links automatically make an answer reliable?
No. Each link must support its associated passage. Repeated links to one source are not independent confirmations.
What if the source is inaccessible?
Retain URL, date and access state. Mark the claim unchecked in this review; seek an accessible version without treating access failure as refutation.
TOOLS / REGISTERS
Write a record
Reviewing a small corpus certifies neither all model behaviour nor facts beyond the documents. Do not send confidential records to a third-party tool without an appropriate access framework.
- Access date and time zone
- Exact URL
- Claim to verify
- Interface / mode / account
- Version / revision
- Observed passage / value
- Limit / uncertainty
- Decision / next action
- Review owner
- Next review