How this site uses evidence

Evidence over anecdote is a promise. This page explains how it is kept.

Not every claim on this site carries the same weight. Some are settled facts drawn from official data. Some are reasonable inferences. Some are working arguments still being tested. Treating all of them the same way would be dishonest, and it would make the strong claims look weaker and the tentative ones look stronger than they are.

So claims are graded. Where it matters, especially on live and contested subjects, a short status label marks how far the evidence actually reaches. The point is simple: you should always be able to see the difference between what is known, what is argued, and what is still open.

The scale

Six levels of claim

Established evidence Supported by official data or strong peer-reviewed research. Example: about one third of crime is reported to police, from Statistics Canada victimization data.

Strong inference Well supported, but a step beyond the raw data. Example: that prison education reduces reoffending, drawn from converging Canadian and international evaluations.

Working hypothesis A plausible argument under active development. It fits the evidence so far but has not been fully tested. Example: that some conduct charged as extortion is better understood as a pattern of coercive domination.

Analytic category A proposed concept for understanding a problem, not a settled legal or empirical fact. Example: "organized criminal persecution" as a way to name a pattern, not an existing criminal offence.

Live case, not a finding of fact Analysis that touches active investigations or prosecutions. It describes how conduct might be understood. It is never an allegation against a specific person or a finding of fact about any individual.

Open question Genuinely unsettled. The evidence is mixed, thin, or contested, and the honest answer is that we do not yet know.

The standard

What this commits the site to

Canadian sources lead wherever a claim concerns Canada.
Each evidence note states the source, the date, and the limitation, not just the finding.
Numbers are stated precisely. "Lower odds" is not the same as "lower rate," and the difference is shown rather than blurred.
International evidence is used only as comparison, and is marked as such, never as proof about Canadian conditions.
When better evidence appears, the claim changes. That is the method working, not failing.

See it in practice

The grading is visible across the site. The clearest examples are the organized extortion argument, which is marked as a working analytic category, and the denialism scan, which grades each link from documented connection down to looser affinity.