Verification

Checking a claim against the document it came from, particularly where a machine produced the claim.

The rule that holds up is that every figure entering published analysis must be traceable to a primary document, and a number nobody can trace does not go in.

Language models fail in a specific and dangerous way here. Fabricated citations, misattributed figures and confidently wrong dates all look identical to correct ones, and fluency is not evidence.

The cost of verification is minutes. The cost of an invented statute is a reputation.