How these pieces are made

Every article starts with an idea from the author, sometimes only a few words long. From there it goes through a fixed sequence, and the author decides at each point that matters.

Research and argument

The idea is turned into questions that evidence could answer. Research favors primary documents, peer-reviewed work, and direct records over commentary about them, and looks as hard for evidence against the idea as for it. Each research note keeps the exact passage its source was cited for, so every factual sentence can be traced back.

A separate review then tries to falsify the thesis: looking for selection bias, confounds, reversed causation, bad analogies, and known findings dressed up as new ones. The strongest version of the argument that survives is what gets written, and the author approves or redirects it before any drafting starts.

AI as infrastructure

Research, skeptical review, structuring, and first drafts are done with the help of AI models working from the research notes, under rules that forbid inventing sources, quotes, statistics, or anecdotes. The ideas, the editorial judgment, and the decision to publish are human. Model runs are logged with the prompt version that produced them, so any conclusion can be traced to how it was reached.

Checking

Before publication, every externally checkable claim is listed and reviewed. Claims about named people, health, law, money, statistics, and historical cause and effect get stricter review, and an article cannot publish while any of them is unresolved. Corrections are noted on the article with their date.

What kind of piece you are reading