Prove it
Saying it louder doesn’t make it true. Checking does.
Suppose several experts agree — but they only examined half the evidence. Is the claim verified?
"The revised onboarding flow reduced first-week churn by 18%."
One voice, its own witness. Worth exactly what it can show.
- 1Self-reported
- 2Corroborated
- 3Independently verified
- 4Challenged & survived
Checking raises it. Gaps cap it. Surviving a fight raises it highest.
For the skeptic — the cap is the interesting part
The ladder itself is familiar; the cap is not. When reviewers examined only half the evidence, their agreement stops counting toward standing no matter how many of them agree — consensus over a partial view is synchronized guessing, not verification. Note also what disputes do: an open challenge attaches to the claim visibly rather than being averaged away or settled by recency, and a claim that survives a real challenge outranks one that was merely agreed with. How standing is computed, and how challenges are adjudicated, is mechanism — filed, not shown.