{"id":613,"slug":"research-brief-confidence-sources-dated-claims","title":"Research brief: Confidence Levels, Sources, and Dated Claims — why every statement on a credible site should be verifiable (piece 15 of 15)","kind":"reference","scope":"business","status":"current","audiences":["kevin","claude-code","smb-owner","candid-team"],"topics":["agency-methodology","editorial-discipline","citation-practices","trust-signals"],"reference_body":"**Status:** Closing piece of the 15-brief roadmap. Research material — not a finished article. Compiled May 22, 2026.\n\n## TL;DR\n\n- **In 2026, unsourced marketing copy is simultaneously a trust liability** (Edelman 2025: 7 in 10 globally believe leaders deliberately mislead), an **AI-visibility liability** (Profound: ChatGPT pulls 7.8% of citations from Wikipedia; Perplexity API returns title+URL+date+snippet for every source), and a **legal liability** (FTC requires \"reasonable basis\" before any objective ad claim).\n- **The discipline that fixes this is not \"add footnotes\"** but a borrowed editorial stack: BBC/Reuters/SPJ named-source rules, Wikipedia's \"verifiability not truth,\" the US intelligence community's high/moderate/low confidence taxonomy, COPE's retraction guidelines, and Perma.cc/DOI-based link-rot mitigation — all operationalized as confidence labels, dated claims, and an inline citation pattern library.\n- **Candid Creative's default:** every objective claim sourced (verbatim quote ≤25 words + URL + date + archive snapshot), every claim confidence-labeled (Verified / Industry-consensus / Single-source / Estimated / Author's view / Contested / Stale), every correction visibly logged, and a public Sources & Methodology page for marketing pages that derive from KB research.\n\n## The 15-piece roadmap closes here for a reason\n\nPieces 1-4 set the strategic frame. Pieces 5-7 set the infrastructure. Pieces 8-9 defend longevity. Pieces 10-11 establish data as the asset. Pieces 12-14 operationalize the asset. **Piece 15 is the editorial layer that turns all of the above from a content-strategy story into a credibility story.** Every piece in the roadmap makes claims; this piece is the one that says **how those claims must be made**.\n\nIt is piece 15 rather than piece 1 because it can only be *specified* once the rest of the system is described — but it underpins the rest in practice.\n\n## Honest caveats\n\n- The AI-citation premium for sourced content is **plausible but not yet rigorously proven** at RCT level. Profound, Perplexity API design, Semrush AI Overview studies are strongly suggestive but largely vendor-produced. **Confidence: Industry-consensus, not Verified.**\n- Confidence-labeling research is from intelligence/forecasting contexts (Tetlock, ICD 203) and translates only partially into marketing — the labels in [[confidence-label-taxonomy-7-label-2026]] are adapted, not directly imported.\n- The \"LLMs 34% more confident when wrong\" circulating with \"MIT research, January 2025\" attribution: closest verifiable primary source is **Simhi et al. (Technion/Oxford/Hebrew U), arXiv:2502.12964, February 2025**. Treat the institutional attribution as Single-source/Contested; the core finding (LLMs hallucinate with high certainty) as Industry-consensus.\n- ClaimReview's status is in flux: schema persists and remains valuable for AI ingestion; Google's June 2025 retirement of the rich result removes the visible incentive. Implement for non-Google AI engines; don't overinvest in Google-specific FactCheck markup.\n- The Reuters Handbook of Journalism was last comprehensively revised in 2012; principles remain in force at Reuters but the document is older than this brief's default 2023 freshness threshold. Included because it is the primary editorial-standards document for Reuters and no successor has replaced it.\n- The FTC's substantiation doctrine (1971/1984) is currently being challenged in **Xlear v. FTC** (filed late 2024, citing Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo). Absent injunction, the doctrine remains in full force as of May 2026. Monitor for outcome.","rationale_body":"Closing piece of the 15-brief Candid Creative foundation roadmap. The seven-label confidence taxonomy this brief codifies is the formal version of what every existing KB entry already uses informally. Going forward, all Candid public content references this taxonomy.","metadata":null,"links":{"outgoing":[{"slug":"edelman-2025-trust-barometer-7-in-10-leaders-mislead","title":"Edelman 2025 Trust Barometer (n=33,000, 28 countries): 7 in 10 believe government/business/journalists deliberately mislead them","kind":"reference","scope":"business","link_type":"relates-to"},{"slug":"bbc-editorial-3-2-2-sound-evidence","title":"BBC Editorial Guidelines §3.2.2: \"All BBC output...must be well sourced, based on sound evidence, thoroughly tested\"","kind":"reference","scope":"business","link_type":"relates-to"},{"slug":"reuters-handbook-anonymous-sources-weakest","title":"Reuters Handbook of Journalism: \"A named source is always preferable to an unnamed source. Anonymous sources are the weakest sources\"","kind":"reference","scope":"business","link_type":"relates-to"},{"slug":"spj-code-identify-sources-clearly-2014","title":"SPJ Code of Ethics (2014): \"Identify sources clearly. The public is entitled to as much information as possible to judge reliability and motivations\"","kind":"reference","scope":"business","link_type":"relates-to"},{"slug":"wikipedia-verifiability-not-truth-policy-foundational","title":"Wikipedia: \"The threshold for inclusion is verifiability, not truth\" — four claim types always need inline citations","kind":"reference","scope":"business","link_type":"relates-to"},{"slug":"ic-confidence-taxonomy-high-moderate-low","title":"US Intelligence Community: high/moderate/low confidence taxonomy (ICD 203/206, 2007 NIE Iran convention)","kind":"reference","scope":"business","link_type":"relates-to"},{"slug":"ftc-reasonable-basis-doctrine-1984","title":"FTC reasonable-basis doctrine: advertisers must possess \"the amount and type of substantiation the ad actually communicates\"","kind":"reference","scope":"business","link_type":"relates-to"},{"slug":"simhi-llm-hallucinate-with-high-certainty-feb-2025","title":"Simhi et al. (Technion/Oxford/Hebrew U, Feb 2025): \"models can hallucinate with high certainty even when they have the correct knowledge\"","kind":"reference","scope":"business","link_type":"relates-to"},{"slug":"nyt-link-half-life-15-years-13pct-content-drift","title":"Link rot: NYT external links 1996-2019 show ~15-year half-life; 13% of \"live\" links no longer point to original content","kind":"reference","scope":"business","link_type":"relates-to"},{"slug":"google-retired-claim-review-rich-results-june-2025","title":"Google retired ClaimReview rich results in June 2025; schema persists for non-Google AI ingestion","kind":"reference","scope":"business","link_type":"relates-to"},{"slug":"trust-project-mirror-8-point-trust-lift","title":"Trust Project / Reach Plc UK: trust in The Mirror jumped 8% after adding Trust Indicators","kind":"reference","scope":"business","link_type":"relates-to"},{"slug":"cope-retraction-guidelines-correct-not-punish","title":"COPE Retraction Guidelines (Aug 2025): \"The purpose of retraction is to correct the literature and ensure its integrity, not to punish the authors\"","kind":"reference","scope":"business","link_type":"relates-to"},{"slug":"confidence-label-taxonomy-7-label-2026","title":"CANDID REFERENCE: 7-label confidence taxonomy — Verified / Industry-consensus / Single-source / Estimated / Author's view / Contested / Stale","kind":"reference","scope":"business","link_type":"relates-to"},{"slug":"citation-pattern-library-8-patterns-2026","title":"CANDID REFERENCE: 8-pattern citation library — inline links, hover footnotes, end-of-section, archive pairs, schema","kind":"reference","scope":"business","link_type":"relates-to"},{"slug":"what-to-source-checklist","title":"CANDID REFERENCE: \"what to source\" checklist — Must / Should / Doesn't need","kind":"reference","scope":"business","link_type":"relates-to"},{"slug":"retraction-correction-playbook","title":"CANDID REFERENCE: retraction/correction playbook — 4 magnitudes from typo to fundamental retraction (adapted from COPE)","kind":"reference","scope":"business","link_type":"relates-to"},{"slug":"link-rot-mitigation-9-step-plan","title":"CANDID REFERENCE: 9-step link-rot mitigation plan — archive on capture, verbatim quote, persistent IDs, quarterly check","kind":"reference","scope":"business","link_type":"relates-to"},{"slug":"foundation-roadmap-15-pieces-closure","title":"CANDID REFERENCE: how the 15-brief foundation roadmap connects — the throughline from strategic frame to editorial layer","kind":"reference","scope":"business","link_type":"relates-to"},{"slug":"rule-every-objective-claim-sourced-with-confidence-label","title":"RULE: Every objective claim in Candid content carries a named source + date + verbatim quote ≤25 words + confidence label","kind":"rule","scope":"business","link_type":"relates-to"},{"slug":"rule-capture-archive-snapshot-at-citation-time","title":"RULE: Capture an archive snapshot (Perma.cc / archive.org) at the moment of citing any web source. Quote verbatim.","kind":"rule","scope":"business","link_type":"relates-to"},{"slug":"rule-publish-corrections-log-and-retraction-policy","title":"RULE: Publish a public corrections log + retraction policy. A correction without a process change is theater.","kind":"rule","scope":"business","link_type":"relates-to"},{"slug":"research-brief-research-before-pages","title":"Research brief: Research Before Pages — methodology for KB-backed websites (piece 14 of 15)","kind":"reference","scope":"business","link_type":"relates-to"},{"slug":"research-brief-kb-backed-website-methodology","title":"Research brief: The knowledge-base-backed website (piece 3 of 15)","kind":"reference","scope":"business","link_type":"relates-to"},{"slug":"research-brief-built-to-last","title":"Research brief: Built to Last — why most SMB sites rebuild every 3-4 years (piece 5 of 15)","kind":"reference","scope":"business","link_type":"relates-to"}],"incoming":[{"slug":"stats-not-supported-by-evidence","title":"Speed/conversion stats commonly cited but NOT supported by primary evidence in 2026 — Candid will not quote these","kind":"rule","scope":"business","link_type":"depends-on"}]},"created_at":"2026-05-22T20:51:26.918Z","updated_at":"2026-05-22T20:51:26.918Z"}