academic-verify — Trace Claims to Source Data

Convention: see conventions/quality.md for citation rules; every verdict cites the source data, not just the author's claim about the source data.

Convention: see conventions/brain-first.md for the lookup chain. This skill enforces brain-first by checking existing brain pages before issuing a fresh web search.

What this is

claim → publication → methodology section → raw data source → independent verification

• Where does this number come from? (Self-generated? Survey? Government data?)
• What's the baseline? (Reduction from what? Over what time period?)
• Is the raw data available? (Public? Proprietary? "Available on request"?)
• Has anyone independently verified it? (Replication study? Government audit?)
• Are there confounding factors? (Other interventions, policy changes, COVID, sampling bias?)
• Is the comparison fair? (Cherry-picked comparison group? Survivorship bias?)

concepts/<claim-slug>.md

When to use this

• A book quotes a study and you want to confirm it's real and not miscited
• An article makes a quantified claim ("X reduced Y by 40%") that you want traced to the source data
• You're writing something that depends on a piece of research and you want to verify the underlying paper holds up
• You're updating a brain page that cites a research claim and you want to record the verification status alongside

What this skill is NOT

• Not adversarial / oppo work. The point is rigor, not takedown.
• Not generic web research — use

  perplexity-research

  directly for open-ended topic exploration.
• Not a brain-only lookup — that's

  gbrain query

  .

How it works (D7/α: pure routing through perplexity-research)

Step 1: Scope the claim
  Pin down EXACTLY what's being claimed:
    • Quote: who said what?
    • Source: which paper / dataset / survey?
    • Number: what specific quantity is claimed?
    • Period: over what time range?

Step 2: Brain-first lookup
  gbrain query "<paper title> OR <author name> OR <claim keywords>"
  If the brain has prior verification of this claim, reuse it.

Step 3: Invoke perplexity-research with citation-mode prompt
  Send the claim + brain context to perplexity-research with a prompt
  that explicitly asks for:
    • Original publication (title, authors, journal, year, DOI)
    • Methodology section summary
    • Raw data availability (public repo? proprietary?)
    • Independent replication status (Retraction Watch / PubPeer hits)
    • Citations of the paper that critique or contextualize it

Step 4: Format the verdict
  Write the result to concepts/<claim-slug>.md. The verdict is one of:
    • Verified — claim is accurate; raw data available; replication exists
    • Partially verified — claim correct on the underlying paper but
      methodology has known limits; record limits explicitly
    • Unverifiable — no public data, no replication; not enough to act
    • Misattributed — the claim cites a paper but the paper doesn't say that
    • Retracted / disputed — paper has known retraction or
      well-documented critique

Step 5: Cross-link to original sources
  Add the paper authors to people/ if they have brain pages, or create
  one if notable. Iron Law per conventions/quality.md.

Output: brain page format

---
title: "[Claim summary] — Verified"
type: research
date: YYYY-MM-DD
verdict: "verified|partial|unverifiable|misattributed|retracted"
brain_context_slugs: ["pages cited as context"]
---

# [Claim summary] — Verified

> One-line: the verdict + the bottom-line reason.

## The Claim

> Exact quote, exactly as stated, with source attribution.

## Trace

| Step | Finding | Source |
|------|---------|--------|
| Original publication | [Title, authors, year, DOI] | [URL] |
| Methodology | [1-line summary; flag obvious limits] | [URL] |
| Raw data | [Public repo / proprietary / available-on-request] | [URL] |
| Independent replication | [Replication studies and their results] | [URL] |
| Critical citations | [Papers that critique this work] | [URL] |

## Verdict

[Verified / Partially verified / Unverifiable / Misattributed / Retracted]

[1-2 paragraphs explaining WHY the verdict, with specific evidence.]

## Caveats

[Honest limits: what we couldn't verify, what would change the verdict.]

## See Also

- Original paper: [Title](DOI URL)
- Authors' brain pages: [Author 1](people/author-1.md), ...
- Related claims (verified or otherwise): [...]

Useful databases (the agent uses these via perplexity-research)

Standards (the rigor bar)

• Verified — only when the underlying paper exists, raw data is public OR an independent lab has confirmed the result, and the citing source represents the claim accurately.
• Partial — paper is real and findings stand, but the citation context oversells (e.g., "X causes Y" when the paper shows correlation, or "all studies find X" when it's one underpowered study).
• Unverifiable — the underlying number can't be traced to source data, no replication has been done, no independent confirmation exists. Not the same as "wrong" — say "we couldn't verify."
• Misattributed — the citation points to a paper, but the paper doesn't actually say what the citation claims. Common in policy briefs.
• Retracted / disputed — paper has been retracted, has a major expression-of-concern, or has well-documented critique that contradicts the headline finding.

Anti-Patterns

• ❌ Skipping the brain-first lookup. Re-doing verification we've already done is wasted Perplexity spend.
• ❌ Bypassing perplexity-research and inventing the lookup. The citations from Perplexity are the evidence — without them, the verdict is just opinion.
• ❌ Stating "Verified" without confirming raw data availability. Replication trumps any single paper.
• ❌ Stating "Unverifiable" when you simply didn't look hard enough. The verdict is on the source, not on your search effort.

Related skills

• skills/perplexity-research/SKILL.md

  — the actual web-search engine this skill routes through (D7/α: pure routing, no new infrastructure)

• skills/citation-fixer/SKILL.md

  — fixes citation FORMATTING; this skill checks whether the cited claim is true

• skills/conventions/quality.md

  — citation + back-link rules

Contract

• Routing matches the canonical triggers in the frontmatter.
• Output written under the directories listed in

  writes_to:

  (when applicable).
• Conventions referenced (

  quality.md

  ,

  brain-first.md

  ,

  _brain-filing-rules.md

  ) are followed.
• Privacy contract preserved: no real names, no fork-specific filesystem path literals, no upstream-fork references.

Output Format

test/skills-conformance.test.ts