What is pre-publication fact-checking, anyway?

Before journalism, I was a cancer biologist who tested all sorts of hypotheses. Every day, as I put on my lab coat and put my sterilized materials under the hood, I was testing something different: Could drug X inhibit cell growth? Could drug Y cause cell death? Would drug Z have a negligible effect and be a good control?

In none of those situations did I take those hypotheses as facts.

In pre-publication fact-checking, fact-checkers often begin with the underlying assumption that all “facts” initially presented as such may not be true. Because of my training in science, it was easy for me to view them as hypotheses that needed to be tested. We need to be skeptical about the fact itself, where it comes from, and whether or not the source may have a vested interest in telling us a particular fact.

Below, I’ve borrowed what my colleague Michelle Nijhuis calls “The Pocket Guide to Bullshit Prevention.” (If you love it, you can even buy it on various merch here.)

In pre-publication fact-checking (which means the fact-checking is conducted before anything is published and widely available for public consumption), every single fact is put to the test. 

As the creator, you’ll annotate a story so a fact-checker will know where you sourced your facts. As a third party who has had nothing to do with the creation of the story up to that point, the fact-checker will put all your claims to the test. We may call up the sources you’ve interviewed. We’ll scour the primary sourcing you’ve provided, check it against any other publicly available information, and propose changes for accuracy based on the sourcing we turned up. 

Every single one of our checkers has this spirit of skepticism. If you’re looking for a third party to help you in the fact-checking process, we’re here to help.