Methodology & standards

This page sets out the standards every investigation on In the Detail is held to. It is a living document; material changes are dated.

Sourcing#

• Primary sources first. Every factual claim is tied to a primary source — a government dataset, a regulator’s filing, a disclosure register, a Hansard record, a court or inquiry document. Where the reporting leans on journalism for narrative or a quote, it traces back to the underlying document wherever one exists.
• Two-source rule for load-bearing claims. Anything in a headline, standfirst, or chart annotation rests either on two independent sources or on a single authoritative dataset recomputed from scratch for the piece.
• Data and code are linked. Each investigation’s methodology box links to the exact datasets used and, where relevant, the analysis scripts that produced the figures. The numbers are meant to be reproducible.

Analysis#

• Questions are registered before the numbers are run. For data-driven pieces, the hypotheses and the tests are written down before analysis begins. Weak or negative results are reported honestly, not quietly dropped.
• Correlation is not causation, and the writing says so. Associations are reported as associations, with the coefficient, method, sample size, and a measure of uncertainty. Every quantitative investigation includes a section that argues, in good faith, the explanations that would prove its thesis wrong.
• Exclusions are disclosed. Records that could not be matched, outliers set aside, and data-vintage mismatches are stated in the methodology box, not buried.

Verification & fairness#

• No fabricated quotes, ever. Quotations appear only when they are verbatim from a linked, dated document or transcript.
• Fact is separated from analysis in the writing, so readers can see where the record ends and interpretation begins.
• Right of reply. Where an investigation makes a specific, adverse claim about a named organisation, its response is sought and represented.

Editorial control#

Reporting is produced by an AI system and reviewed by a human editor, Ben Richardson. Every investigation is approved by a person before publication — see About. No piece is published automatically.

Corrections#

Errors are corrected in the open. When a material correction is made, it is logged with a date on the article itself and aggregated on the Corrections page, and the change is noted in the article’s feed entry. To flag an error, email hi@ben.gy.