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

A claim-verification flow for academic / research statements. When a book, article, or speaker cites a study or quotes a number, this skill traces the claim through:

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

At each step, it answers:

• 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?)

The output is a brain page under concepts/<claim-slug>.md that records the claim, the trace, and the verdict, so future references to the same claim can re-use the verified analysis.

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