Sources and corrections
How a number gets checked
The habit comes from drill sites: one thin tube of soil speaks for a whole hillside, so you check the sample before you trust the map. Every number David publishes gets the same four questions.
Four questions before trusting any number
Example headline
Visits3 up 40%2
says a new report1
4- 1Who counted?
A census, a survey, or police records?
- 2Out of how many?
"Up 40%" means little until you know the starting number.
- 3Compared to what?
One group's number only means something next to everyone else's, measured the same way.
- 4What's left out?
Every count misses someone. Ask who.
What "checked" means
On Neighbor Radio, each answer ends with the sources it was checked against, with a link to each one. A number without a source does not go on the page.
Government counts, peer-reviewed research and the institutions a community runs for itself come before news coverage of them. A news story can be the start of a check, never the end of one.
Each page says when it was last reviewed. If a source updates its figures, the page gets updated and the date moves.
Anyone can use these numbers. Please cite the original source listed with each one, not this site.
Every answer is checked against sources like these
- Pew Research Center
- U.S. Census Bureau
- Congress.gov
- National Archives
- Library of Congress
- Smithsonian
- CDC
- National Institute of Mental Health
- 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline
- Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- Harvard Pluralism Project
- Sefaria
- My Jewish Learning
- Quran.com
- Hindu American Foundation
- Sikh Coalition
- National Congress of American Indians
Found a mistake?
Email the page link and what's wrong. David reads every message. A confirmed error is fixed on the page, the source is updated, and the review date moves, so anyone can see what changed.