An assignment
You need a source for a claim. The first result is a well-designed page with no author, no date, and a lot of confidence.
What do you do?
Step 1: What Would You Do?
There is often more than one good answer. Pick one and see what happens.
A shared post
A relative sends you a post saying a common household item is dangerous. It cites "researchers".
What do you do?
Step 2: What That Was
The name for what you just worked out.
Most claims reach you third-hand. A study becomes a press release becomes a news story becomes a post. Each step drops caveats, and none of them adds evidence.
What kind of thing is it?
A study reports what was measured. A press release exists to get attention for whoever wrote it. A news article is written to a deadline by somebody who may not be a specialist.
Who paid for it
Funding does not make research wrong. It does tell you which questions somebody chose to ask, and which results would have been quietly filed away.
How many, and compared to what
Two numbers rescue most health and science claims: how many people were in it, and what the comparison group did.
Step 3: Try It
These ones do have right answers.
What Is It For?
Match each source to what it is actually designed to do.
Every source has a purpose. What is each one’s?
Tap a card on the left to start.
Step 4: Quick Check
Two questions, then you are done.
Question 1 of 1
A headline says a food "could cut your risk by 40%". What do you most need to know?
Step 5: Your Life Mission
Something to do away from the screen. Nobody is checking.
Walk one claim home
- Take one science or health headline this week.
- Find the press release behind it, then the study behind that.
- Note what got stronger at each step.
Why: Doing this once changes how every headline reads afterwards.
Step 6: What You Learned
- Trace a claim back to where it started.
- Ask what kind of source it is and what that kind is for.
- For any percentage change, ask: percent of what?
For the grown-up
The relative-versus-absolute risk point is arguably the single most useful piece of numeracy an adult can carry, and it is almost never taught explicitly. It is worth practicing on real health headlines together.
Tracing a claim to its origin is a genuinely enjoyable exercise once or twice — a headline, then the press release, then the paper, watching the certainty grow at every step backwards.
Resist letting this become general cynicism. The aim is a student who can tell a strong source from a weak one, not one who concludes that nothing can be known.