Sourcing & Evidence Methodology

This page explains how UFOPress handles sources and evidence.

Source preferences

When establishing facts we prefer, in rough order: official documents; direct testimony; government records; legislation and committee records; scientific papers and institutional sources; and original interviews and statements. High-quality secondary reporting is used for context, and we identify when a source is merely reporting another source's claim.

Primary vs. secondary

We link to the primary record whenever it is legally and technically possible, so a reader can check our work against the original. When a claim traces back to a single origin, repetition of that claim across outlets is not treated as independent corroboration.

What we record for major research

For durable research pages we maintain a source ledger noting, where applicable: access date, publication date, version or amendment date, relevant URLs, and any sources that are inaccessible or have been deleted. We avoid circular sourcing and distinguish independent corroboration from repetition.

Evaluating a source

We keep these dimensions separate rather than collapsing them into one number: source type; primary vs. secondary status; directness; independence; corroboration; documentary support; chain of custody; conflicts of interest; relevant expertise; public accessibility; date and version; known contradictions; and, for automatically extracted data, the confidence of that extraction.

Anonymous sources

Anonymous sourcing is used sparingly and is labeled as such; an anonymous claim is treated as attributed-but-unverified unless corroborated by reviewable evidence.