Editorial standard

Methodology

The site uses two related inclusion standards. The core catalogue tracks scientific and scholarly claims that were once reasonably treated as factual or as the best available evidence-based explanation. Institutional Beliefs uses a stricter test for factual propositions that became embedded in institutional practice.

The core catalogue

A core entry must make a concrete factual claim and show that it had meaningful standing within a relevant expert community, institution, textbook tradition, reference work, or professional practice. The former claim must have been reasonably defensible in its historical setting, and the later change must be traceable to stronger evidence, improved measurement, or a more successful explanatory framework.

Institutional Beliefs

This collection asks a narrower question: did a factual proposition become operational inside an identifiable institution and materially shape what that institution did? A case should support all five links in the chain:

Proposition: A specific factual proposition that was treated as true.
Carrier: An identifiable institution, authority, profession, or institutional system that carried it.
Mechanism: A policy, diagnosis, law, professional standard, training practice, curriculum, evidentiary rule, protocol, or comparable mechanism through which the proposition was put into practice.
Consequences: Decisions, practices, classifications, treatments, or other outcomes materially shaped by it.
Correction: Evidence, review, or institutional change that corrected, narrowed, replaced, abandoned, or disconfirmed the proposition.

Being widely believed is not enough. The institutional carrier and the operational mechanism must be identifiable from the evidence.

What does not qualify

The core catalogue is not a collection of generic misconceptions. Urban legends, failed predictions, satire, isolated quotations, propaganda, value judgments, and claims that relevant experts consistently rejected do not qualify. A law or policy can provide evidence for an Institutional Beliefs case when it rests on a testable factual claim. A value judgment or policy preference, by itself, cannot.

Required evidence

Each core entry should normally include evidence that the former claim was genuinely accepted and evidence supporting the current understanding. Institutional Beliefs entries also need evidence for the carrier, mechanism, consequences, and correction. Sources are labelled by purpose so readers can see what each citation establishes.

Glossary

The glossary defines technical, historical, or otherwise unfamiliar terms used in the catalogue when replacing them with plainer language would lose useful precision.

Status labels

Overturned: The former claim is now considered substantially incorrect.
Superseded: A stronger explanation or model replaced it.
Narrowed: The claim remains valid only under more limited conditions.
Reclassified: The object, condition, or phenomenon is categorized differently.
Corrected: Improved data or measurement produced a materially different answer.

Corrections

Entries are dated and periodically reviewed. Dates and boundaries are treated as approximations where the historical record demands it. A source becoming outdated, a consensus being overstated, or stronger evidence emerging is a reason to revise the catalogue. Submissions and corrections are reviewed before publication.