s4h-investigation-source-trace

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.

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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

Step 2: Identify Potential Origin Points Work backward. What is the earliest source you can find for this claim? Strategies:

• Search for the earliest publication or statement you can locate
• Look for the claim's attributed origin (is someone cited? Is that citation accurate?)
• Check whether the claim appears in academic literature, a specific study, a book, a news report, or originated as someone's opinion
• Note any "citation laundering" — claims that cite a secondary source which itself doesn't cite a primary source

Step 3: Evaluate the Origin Source Once you have the earliest traceable source, assess it:

• Who made the claim? What are their credentials, institutional affiliation, and potential biases?
• When was it made? What was the context at the time?
• What was the original evidence? Was it a study (what kind?), a data analysis, an observation, an opinion, a hypothesis?
• What caveats did the original source include that have since been dropped?
• What did the original claim actually assert — is it narrower, broader, or different from the current form?