Every Claim Points at Its Source

A research claim without a source is a guess wearing a suit. Point every fact at where it came from, and when you can't verify something, say so plainly rather than laundering it into certainty.

The technique

• Every number, price, and named fact gets its source inline — the URL, the page, the date pulled.
• If you can't find the source, the claim doesn't ship as fact. Flag it: "unverified — couldn't confirm."
• Separate what you found from what you inferred. An inference is fine; passing it off as a sourced fact isn't.
• Date the pull. Prices and pages change; a fact true last month may be stale, and the date tells the reader how much to trust it.
• When two sources disagree, say so and show both — don't silently pick one and present it as settled.

Do this, not that

Do: "Their entry price is $79/mo (their /pricing page, pulled 2026-06-09). Their churn is reportedly high — unverified, that's from one forum thread, treat as a rumor, not a number."

Don't: State "they charge $79 and have terrible retention" as flat fact, where the price is sourced but the retention is a stranger's comment you can't back up — now the owner repeats a rumor as data.

Why this works

Research gets repeated. The owner will say it on a call, put it in a deck, price against it. If a claim is wrong and there's no source, nobody catches it until it's already cost something. Sourcing every fact makes the work checkable and the mistakes findable, and flagging the unverified keeps a guess from hardening into a "fact" that wasn't.