Fact-Checking Policy
How our myth-check desk decides what to examine, how a verdict is reached, and what we do when we get one wrong.
What we check
Health claims circulating in India — on WhatsApp, on social media, in product marketing, and in the wider health-content category. We prioritise claims that are spreading quickly, claims where believing them carries real risk, and claims readers send us.
We check claims, not people. A myth-check names the claim and the evidence, not the relative who forwarded it.
The six verdicts
| Verdict | Meaning |
|---|---|
| True | The claim is accurate as stated. |
| Mostly True | Accurate in substance, with a minor imprecision. |
| Partly True / Missing Context | Contains something real but omits context that changes the conclusion. |
| Unproven | Neither supported nor refuted by available evidence. |
| False | Contradicted by the evidence. |
| Potentially Harmful | False or unproven, and acting on it carries a risk of harm. |
“Unproven” is not a soft “false”. It is used where the honest position is that nobody has established the answer — and it is the correct verdict more often than this category admits.
How a myth-check is produced
- Intake. The claim is recorded verbatim, with where and when it was seen.
- Research. Sources are gathered against our published hierarchy. Systematic reviews first.
- Draft. The article sets out the claim, its origin, what the evidence shows, why it spreads, the risk of believing it, and what to do instead.
- Verdict. Proposed by the writer, confirmed by the Myth-Check Editor and a medical reviewer.
- Dual sign-off. Because a myth-check necessarily quotes a prohibited claim, it needs approval from both the Editor-in-Chief and a medical reviewer, logged with a justification.
Quoting a false claim safely
Refuting a claim requires stating it, which risks the claim being read as our own. So the quoted claim sits inside a marked block that renders visually as a claim under examination, struck through where the verdict is false, and labelled “THE CLAIM / दावा”.
Our headlines never state a false claim as fact. “Myth-Check: does X cure Y?” is a question. “X cures Y” is not something we print, even to disagree with it two lines later — many readers only see the headline.
When the answer is uncomfortable
Sometimes the evidence supports a traditional claim; sometimes it refutes one that is important to people. We publish either way. A fact-check desk that only ever confirms what its audience already believes is not a fact-check desk.
Corrections to a myth-check
If we reach a wrong verdict, we change it, mark the article as corrected, and log it at /corrections/ with the date and the reason. A changed verdict is never made silently — the original verdict and the revision both remain visible.
Submit a claim
Send anything you have received to [email protected] with the subject “Myth-check”. A screenshot and where you saw it is enough. We cannot check everything, but we read all of it, and volume is one of the things that tells us a claim is spreading.