academic-verify — Trace Claims to Source Data

Convention: see conventions/quality.md for citation rules; every verdict cites the source data, not just the author's claim about the source data.

Convention: see conventions/brain-first.md for the lookup chain. This skill enforces brain-first by checking existing brain pages before issuing a fresh web search.

What this is

A claim-verification flow for academic / research statements. When a book, article, or speaker cites a study or quotes a number, this skill traces the claim through:

claim → publication → methodology section → raw data source → independent verification

At each step, it answers:

• Where does this number come from? (Self-generated? Survey? Government data?)
• What's the baseline? (Reduction from what? Over what time period?)
• Is the raw data available? (Public? Proprietary? "Available on request"?)
• Has anyone independently verified it? (Replication study? Government audit?)
• Are there confounding factors? (Other interventions, policy changes, COVID, sampling bias?)
• Is the comparison fair? (Cherry-picked comparison group? Survivorship bias?)

The output is a brain page under concepts/<claim-slug>.md that records the claim, the trace, and the verdict — so future references to the same claim can re-use the verified analysis.

When to use this

• A book quotes a study and you want to confirm it's real and not miscited
• An article makes a quantified claim ("X reduced Y by 40%") that you want traced to the source data
• You're writing something that depends on a piece of research and you want to verify the underlying paper holds up
• You're updating a brain page that cites a research claim and you want to record the verification status alongside

What this skill is NOT

• Not adversarial / oppo work. The point is rigor, not takedown.
• Not generic web research — use perplexity-research directly for open-ended topic exploration.
• Not a brain-only lookup — that's gbrain query.

How it works (D7/α: pure routing through perplexity-research)

academic-verify is a thin orchestrator. The actual web search is done by perplexity-research. academic-verify's job is the workflow: scoping the claim precisely, sending it through perplexity-research with citation-mode, then formatting the response into a verdict-shaped brain page.

Step 1: Scope the claim
  Pin down EXACTLY what's being claimed:
    • Quote: who said what?
    • Source: which paper / dataset / survey?
    • Number: what specific quantity is claimed?
    • Period: over what time range?

Step 2: Brain-first lookup
  gbrain query "<paper title> OR <author name> OR <claim keywords>"
  If the brain has prior verification of this claim, reuse it.

Step 3: Invoke perplexity-research with citation-mode prompt
  Send the claim + brain context to perplexity-research with a prompt
  that explicitly asks for:
    • Original publication (title, authors, journal, year, DOI)
    • Methodology section summary
    • Raw data availability (public repo? proprietary?)
    • Independent replication status (Retraction Watch / PubPeer hits)
    • Citations of the paper that critique or contextualize it

Step 4: Format the verdict
  Write the result to concepts/<claim-slug>.md. The verdict is one of:
    • Verified — claim is accurate; raw data available; replication exists
    • Partially verified — claim correct on the underlying paper but
      methodology has known limits; record limits explicitly
    • Unverifiable — no public data, no replication; not enough to act
    • Misattributed — the claim cites a paper but the paper doesn't say that
    • Retracted / disputed — paper has known retraction or
      well-documented critique

Step 5: Cross-link to original sources
  Add the paper authors to people/ if they have brain pages, or create
  one if notable. Iron Law per conventions/quality.md.

Output: brain page format

---
title: "[Claim summary] — Verified"
type: research
date: YYYY-MM-DD
verdict: "verified|partial|unverifiable|misattributed|retracted"
brain_context_slugs: ["pages cited as context"]
---

# [Claim summary] — Verified

> One-line: the verdict + the bottom-line reason.

## The Claim

> Exact quote, exactly as stated, with source attribution.

## Trace

| Step | Finding | Source |
|------|---------|--------|
| Original publication | [Title, authors, year, DOI] | [URL] |
| Methodology | [1-line summary; flag obvious limits] | [URL] |
| Raw data | [Public repo / proprietary / available-on-request] | [URL] |
| Independent replication | [Replication studies and their results] | [URL] |
| Critical citations | [Papers that critique this work] | [URL] |

## Verdict

[Verified / Partially verified / Unverifiable / Misattributed / Retracted]

[1-2 paragraphs explaining WHY the verdict, with specific evidence.]

## Caveats

[Honest limits: what we couldn't verify, what would change the verdict.]

## See Also

- Original paper: [Title](DOI URL)
- Authors' brain pages: [Author 1](people/author-1.md), ...
- Related claims (verified or otherwise): [...]

Useful databases (the agent uses these via perplexity-research)

Standards (the rigor bar)

• Verified — only when the underlying paper exists, raw data is public OR an independent lab has confirmed the result, and the citing source represents the claim accurately.
• Partial — paper is real and findings stand, but the citation context oversells (e.g., "X causes Y" when the paper shows correlation, or "all studies find X" when it's one underpowered study).
• Unverifiable — the underlying number can't be traced to source data, no replication has been done, no independent confirmation exists. Not the same as "wrong" — say "we couldn't verify."
• Misattributed — the citation points to a paper, but the paper doesn't actually say what the citation claims. Common in policy briefs.
• Retracted / disputed — paper has been retracted, has a major expression-of-concern, or has well-documented critique that contradicts the headline finding.

Never claim a problem without evidence. The verification document itself is the artifact — if the claim holds up, say so plainly. If it doesn't, the trace speaks for itself.

When it fails

Follow the agent operator protocol for any gbrain error code, exit code, [AGENT] block or notice block. Specific to this skill:

• The brain pass (gbrain query) comes back empty with a degraded notice (keyword-only, embeddings off): paraphrased study titles miss on keywords, so retry with the author, journal or year before saying the brain has no prior notes on the claim.
• The web pass through perplexity-research fails (no PERPLEXITY_API_KEY, rate_limited): mark the claim UNVERIFIED, never "false", and tell the user which step could not run; on rate_limited retry once after the stated delay.
• Saving the verdict returns write_pending (exit 10): the write is accepted; poll gbrain write-request <request_id> instead of writing a second verdict page.

Anti-Patterns

• ❌ Skipping the brain-first lookup. Re-doing verification we've already done is wasted Perplexity spend.
• ❌ Bypassing perplexity-research and inventing the lookup. The citations from Perplexity are the evidence — without them, the verdict is just opinion.
• ❌ Stating "Verified" without confirming raw data availability. Replication trumps any single paper.
• ❌ Stating "Unverifiable" when you simply didn't look hard enough. The verdict is on the source, not on your search effort.

Related skills

• skills/perplexity-research/SKILL.md — the actual web-search engine this skill routes through (D7/α: pure routing, no new infrastructure)
• skills/citation-fixer/SKILL.md — fixes citation FORMATTING; this skill checks whether the cited claim is true
• skills/conventions/quality.md — citation + back-link rules

Contract

This skill guarantees:

• Routing matches the canonical triggers in the frontmatter.
• Output written under the directories listed in writes_to: (when applicable).
• Conventions referenced (quality.md, brain-first.md, _brain-filing-rules.md) are followed.
• Privacy contract preserved: no real names, no fork-specific filesystem path literals, no upstream-fork references.

The full behavior contract is documented in the body sections above; this section exists for the conformance test.

Output Format

The skill's output shape is documented inline in the body sections above (see "Output", "Brain page format", or equivalent). The literal section header here exists for the conformance test (test/skills-conformance.test.ts).