# Credibility rubric — SIFT, CRAAP, lateral reading, confidence tiers

The body picks the check by source type. This is the full walkthrough you offload to when
a source is borderline.

## SIFT — for web and popular sources

Mike Caulfield's SIFT is fast and built for the open web, where the question is usually
"can I trust this at all" rather than "is this scholarship sound."

- **Stop.** Before you read or quote, pause. Do you recognize the source? Is your reaction
  ("this confirms what I wanted") doing the evaluating for you? Stop again whenever you
  feel certainty arriving too easily.
- **Investigate the source.** Who published this, and what's their stake? A vendor blog
  arguing its own product wins is a lead, not a neutral finding. You're not reading the
  article yet — you're sizing up who wrote it.
- **Find better coverage.** Don't fixate on the page you landed on. Is there a more
  authoritative source making the same claim? If the only place a claim appears is one
  blog, that's a low-confidence claim by definition.
- **Trace to the original.** Most web claims are re-reports. Follow the chain back to the
  primary source — the actual filing, paper, release note, dataset. Quote that, with its
  date, not the re-report.

## CRAAP — for scholarly and formal-document sources

When the source is a paper, standard, regulation, or formal report, evaluate it on its
merits:

- **Currency** — when was it published or last revised? Is that recent enough for the
  claim? (A 2021 benchmark is stale for a 2026 performance claim.)
- **Relevance** — does it actually address your question, or just mention the keyword?
- **Authority** — who are the authors/issuer, and are they credentialed for this?
- **Accuracy** — is it evidenced, cited, reproducible? Does it agree with other sources?
- **Purpose** — inform, sell, persuade, or advocate? Purpose colours which facts get
  emphasized and which get omitted.

## Lateral reading — the move that does the work

Vertical reading (staying on the page, reading top to bottom, judging it by how
professional it looks) is how people get fooled. **Lateral reading** is leaving the page
to judge it:

1. Open a new tab.
2. Search the author's or organization's name plus "funding", "owned by", "criticism",
   or the claim itself.
3. Read what *independent* parties say about them before you trust what they say about
   themselves.

A polished site, a confident tone, and an "About us" page are presentation, not evidence.
The org's reputation as reported by others is the evidence.

## Confidence tiers, with worked examples

Assign a tier to every load-bearing claim. Use it in the provenance line.

| Tier | When | Worked example |
|---|---|---|
| **High** | Primary/authoritative source, or a claim corroborated across ≥2 independent ones | A regulator's own published rule text, accessed at the source; or two independent reputable outlets reporting the same dated figure |
| **Medium** | Reputable secondary source, single, plausible but not yet corroborated | A respected trade-press article reporting a number with a date, no second source found yet |
| **Low** | Single blog/forum/vendor claim, uncorroborated, or no discernible date | One personal blog asserting a benchmark with no methodology and no other source repeating it |

Worked walkthrough:

- **Government filing → High.** You're at the primary source; SIFT's "trace to original"
  is already satisfied. Cite it with its publication date.
- **Corroborated trade press → Medium → can rise to High.** One outlet reports a figure;
  you find a second, independent outlet (not republishing the first) with the same figure
  and date. Independence is what promotes it; two outlets quoting one wire story stay
  Medium.
- **Single blog → Low.** Useful as a lead — it might point you to a primary source worth
  tracing — but never cite it as the basis for a load-bearing claim. If it's the only
  thing you can find, the claim itself is low-confidence; say so in the memo.

## Independence test

Two sources are independent only if they don't both derive from the same origin. Three
articles quoting the same press release are **one** source. Before you call a claim
triangulated, ask: would these still agree if the one upstream source were wrong?
