How to Read a Confidence Score
Every verdict on Conspirafy has a confidence percentage. It's there to answer: how sure are you, really?
We never say 100%
Epistemic humility is the foundation of good factchecking. New primary evidence can overturn long-settled consensus — that's exactly what happened with the 1994 declassification of Project Mogul and the 2023 DOE assessment on COVID-19 origin. A 100% claim forecloses future evidence. We keep a sliver of probability open, always.
The confidence bands
| Range | Label | Example |
|---|---|---|
| 95-99% | Virtually certain | Moon landing occurred; Earth is not flat; no MMR-autism link. |
| 85-94% | Very confident | Diana crash was accidental; Pizzagate is fabricated; no Bilderberg world government. |
| 70-84% | Confident | Roswell was a Mogul balloon; Bilderberg is a networking forum, not a policymaking body. |
| 60-69% | Leaning | JFK assassination had a lone gunman (the verdict we assigned: ongoing_investigation with 65% confidence on Oswald-acted-alone). |
| 40-59% | Genuinely uncertain | COVID-19 lab leak origin — we report 'ongoing_investigation' because no agency reaches 60%. |
| <40% | Insufficient evidence | We typically won't publish with this level of uncertainty unless the theory itself is widely claimed. |
What a confidence score is NOT
- A literal probability calculation. We do not run Bayesian updates with formal priors.
- A stock market quote. Scores update only when new primary evidence warrants it.
- A popularity measure. We do not adjust based on what readers believe.
What “would change our verdict”
Every theory page includes a clause stating what evidence would move us off the current verdict. If you think our stated conditions have been met, file a correction. That's the feedback loop.