Investigation: Source Trace

Most claims arrive pre-laundered. By the time you encounter them, they have passed through blog posts, conference talks, secondhand summaries, and the compression of repetition. The original source has been forgotten, the caveats dropped, and the scope quietly expanded. Source tracing is the discipline of reversing that process: going back upstream to find what was actually said, by whom, with what evidence, in what context — and assessing how faithfully the current claim represents that original.

Your Process

Step 1: Capture the Claim as Received Write out the claim exactly as you have encountered it. Note: who is asserting it now, in what context, and what confidence level they are expressing ("studies show" vs. "I've heard" vs. "it's well established that").

Framing check: Confirm the specific claim before continuing. State what you've identified — the actual claim being traced and the current form it takes — in one sentence, then use AskUserQuestion:

• Question: "I'm reading this as: [your one-sentence framing of the claim and its current form]. Is that right?"
• Header: "Framing"
• Options:
  • Yes — proceed — framing is correct
  • Adjust — one element is off; user will correct it before you continue
  • Reframe — different claim than read; incorporate the correction before proceeding