Check Facts, Quotes, Numbers, and Citations

Follow each important claim back to evidence that actually supports it.

A report can have a bibliography, polished footnotes, and a confident conclusion while still being wrong.

Sometimes the cited publication does not exist. Sometimes it exists but addresses a different question. Sometimes the source is relevant, yet the draft turns a limited finding into a sweeping claim.

These are different failures. Checking only whether a link opens will catch some and miss others.

The practical solution is to examine claims one at a time. Ask whether the source exists, whether it supports the statement, and whether the wording preserves what the source actually says.

Break the paragraph into claims

Consider: “Our workshop increased attendance by 25 percent, proved that students learn faster, and should therefore be expanded citywide.”

That sentence contains a numerical comparison, a causal claim about learning, and a recommendation. Each needs different support.

The attendance records may support the first. They do not automatically establish the second. The third depends on goals, resources, alternatives, and the strength of the first two claims.

Ask an assistant:

Extract the factual assertions, exact quotations, numerical comparisons, and recommendations from this draft. List the evidence each would need. Do not mark anything verified just because a citation is attached.

Review the extracted list yourself. Claims can hide in headlines, chart labels, captions, and phrases such as “proven” or “guaranteed.”

Verify that the cited source exists

Open the publisher's record or original document. Match the title, author or organization, date, and identifying information.

A link that leads to the right journal but the wrong article does not pass. Neither does a real author attached to an invented title.

If you cannot find the reference, mark it unresolved while you investigate. Absence from one search is not proof that a publication never existed. In a draft, however, an unlocated source cannot support a claim you present as verified.

Do not ask the same assistant to “confirm” a reference and accept another unsupported yes. Ask for the actual record and inspect it.

Then verify what it supports

Read the relevant passage and enough surrounding material to understand it. Check the population, time period, definitions, method, and limitations.

A study of experienced programmers in familiar repositories does not directly measure every office worker. A museum history page does not establish that a school program improved test scores.

Keep this distinction visible in your notes: “source exists” and “source supports claim” are separate checks.

Cornell's academic-integrity guidance explicitly places responsibility on students to verify output and references when AI assistance is permitted. The same habit is useful in community and professional writing. Cornell: AI & Academic Integrity.

Practice on a deliberately flawed six-claim brief

The following is a teaching exercise. Claims marked below are deliberately mixed: some are accurate, some are false, and one uses an invented reference. Do not reuse the passage as factual copy.

Source packet

S1: The real Smithsonian museum history page.
S2: The real Smithsonian visitor page, reviewed September 8, 2026.
F1, fictional attendance record: One learning club recorded 60 attendees at its first session and 75 at its second. No test scores or comparison group were recorded.
F2, fictional coordinator note: “These counts describe our club, not a citywide trend.”
X1, deliberately invented citation: Universal Learning Gains from Community Visits, Example Research Bureau, 2026. This title and reference were created for the exercise and are not evidence.

Flawed brief

The museum opened to the public on March 17, 1910. [S1]
Ordinary museum admission requires an entry ticket. [S2]
Club attendance rose by 25 percentage points, from 60 to 75 people. [F1]
The coordinator said, “These counts prove a citywide trend.” [F2]
Community visits double learning in every age group. [X1]
The museum's history page establishes a 40 percent improvement in student test scores. [S1]

Before reading the answer key, decide what you would keep, correct, remove, or investigate.

Build the claim ledger

A claim ledger is a table showing what you checked and what happened:

Claim	Finding	Required correction
1	Supported by S1	Keep with the direct source
2	Contradicted by S2's ordinary admission information	Correct the ticket claim; do not generalize to every special program
3	Wrong kind of numerical change	Report 15 more attendees, a 25 percent increase relative to 60
4	Altered quotation reverses the note's meaning	Restore the exact wording or paraphrase faithfully
5	Invented reference supplies no evidence	Remove the claim unless valid evidence is independently found
6	Real source does not support the asserted result	Remove the unsupported test-score claim

The final row is a crucial test. A genuine source can be attached to an invented conclusion.

Check the denominator and the unit

In F1, the increase is 75 minus 60, or 15 people. Divide 15 by the original 60 to obtain 0.25, or 25 percent.

Percentage points describe differences between percentages. If a participation rate rises from 40 percent to 50 percent, it rises by 10 percentage points, which is also a 25 percent relative increase. Those two descriptions answer different questions.

For every number, ask “of what?” and “measured how?” Check whether a report compares counts, rates, averages, or totals. Do not let the assistant change units while making prose more concise.

The fictional club's higher attendance also does not prove the event caused better learning. Different questions need different measurements.

Preserve quotations and qualifications

Quotation marks promise that you are reproducing words accurately. Check the wording, speaker, source, and context. An omission should not reverse the meaning or remove a condition the reader needs.

For lengthy source material, a faithful paraphrase with a citation is often more useful than a long quotation. Keep direct quotations brief and observe applicable reuse limits.

If you translate a quotation, say that it is translated and check important nuances. Do not label an assistant's polished rewording as the speaker's exact words.

Students: cite the evidence you actually examined

Suppose an assistant gives you a paper title and a summary. Finding the paper is only the first step. Read the part relevant to your argument and record where the evidence appears.

If you have only read an abstract, do not imply you reviewed the complete method or results. If your assignment requires a particular citation style, format the real source after checking its details.

Keep AI process disclosure separate from evidence citation. Describing how a tool helped you does not turn it into the source of a historical fact or scientific finding.

Your exercise

Create a corrected version of the six-claim brief using only supported statements. Keep the museum facts separate from the fictional club data so readers do not assume a connection.

Save the ledger alongside the corrected brief. Mark unresolved claims explicitly instead of hiding them behind vague language such as “research suggests.”

Completion check: You catch the invented reference, the altered quotation, the numerical error, and the real source that fails to support its attached claim.