The method behind every episode

Every claim gets a label

The shape of the stamp tells you which one, so it reads in black and white and at thumbnail size. A filled stamp always means the evidence supports the claim.

The evidence is public and independently verified: an audited financial statement, a regulator’s or a court’s document, peer-reviewed research, or data anyone can reproduce.

Someone says so, but nothing independent backs it up. A company’s own figure or claim about itself is claimed, even in a stock-exchange filing. We always say who is making the claim.

Something that matters is missing: a number nobody reports, a measure that stopped, a test that was never published. We say what we looked for and where.

A number that is not in any source as such, worked out from sourced numbers. We say so out loud and show the sum.

missing

A value that is absent from a dataset. It is marked missing and never counted as zero.

Tested adds a verdict

The claim passes the test described in the episode.

Part of it passes and part doesn’t, or the result depends on a choice of method.

The claim fails the test described in the episode.

Sources

• Primary sources only: the original document or dataset, not another creator’s summary.
• If an idea can’t be found in an independent primary source, we don’t present it as fact. If a term or model is one person’s invention, we name them.
• Every number on screen carries its source and date. Where the licence allows, the video shows the original page with the document’s own page number.
• Each document is listed with the date it was published and the date we opened it. Data also says the last day it covers.

Numbers

• Missing data is marked missing, never zero.
• Our own arithmetic is labelled as ours, and the method is published with the sources.
• Every number, year, place and version is checked before we render and again on the day we publish.
• A Short never claims more than the full episode.

Pictures

• Generated illustrations are marked as illustrations and are never used as evidence.
• Evidence is the original source, our own chart of documented data, or licensed material.

Independence

• A sponsor never changes a label or a verdict, and a sponsored episode says so.
• When an episode touches a client or industry of Über Creative, the video description says so.

Where to find the evidence

Every episode has a source page here, figure by figure: each number on screen with its document, page and date. The video description lists the key sources. Every episode and its sources

Mistakes are corrected where you watched them and logged in the corrections log. Found one? Email [email protected] with the time stamp and your source.