Verification Log

CultureTechLens grades claims for people outside CultureTechLens — journalists on deadline, teachers and classrooms, researchers, readers. This page is the public log of that work: the claim, the grade, and the sources, in the open — including the claims we could not settle.

Send a claim

On deadline? Send the claim — we grade it against the record and name the sources, free. One email to [email protected] with “Verification” in the subject line is the whole form. Teachers: the same route serves a classroom checking a claim about Black Chicago.

The log

Log opened October 25, 2026. Entries to date: 0.

Zero is a publishable number here. A month with no claims is a line in this log, not a gap in it. Entries appear as claims are answered, batched with the site’s regular updates, and the log is append-only — entries are never edited in place.

How to read an entry

Every entry carries the same fields:

• The claim — the requester’s exact wording, quoted.
• Requester lane — newsroom, classroom, researcher, or reader. An outlet or school is named only when the requester wrote in a professional capacity and consents; email addresses are never published.
• Grade — on CultureTechLens’s published scale: VERIFIED, SUPPORTED, PROVISIONAL, DISPUTED, UNRESOLVED — with FALSE where the record settles it.
• The counted record — what the record shows, in plain language, with the sources the grade rests on and the CultureTechLens page, package, or graph record it was checked against (DOI where one exists).
• Outcome — answered; answered, could not settle (UNRESOLVED is a publishable answer, never hidden); declined, out of scope, with the reason class shown; or deadline missed, told plainly.
• Published use — if the requester later publishes citing CultureTechLens, the link is added to the entry and the citation itself is recorded at Cited By. A verification answered is not a citation earned; the two ledgers cross-reference and never blend.

Not the corrections log

Two logs, two jobs. Corrections records CultureTechLens’s own errors and their repairs — inward accountability. This log records outside claims graded at request — outward service. A graded claim never appears in Corrections, and a CultureTechLens error never appears here; if a verification uncovers one of our errors, both logs gain an entry, cross-linked.

The firewall

No funder sees a claim, shapes a grade, suppresses an entry, or accelerates a turnaround. The log grades claims, not people, and its scope is the ground CultureTechLens’s record can speak to: Black history and culture, checked against the record.

Source: CultureTechLens