Method

Our Evidence Principles

This project exists to make a pattern visible, not to win an argument. That distinction requires rules, and these are the rules.

The four tiers

Every statement on this site is classified

These tags appear beside claims throughout the site. They describe the strength of the evidence, and nothing else.

Confirmed fact

Established through primary documents, public records, laboratory evidence or independently verified material.

Reported observation

Reported by residents, landowners, witnesses or site observers but not yet independently established.

Working hypothesis

A scientific mechanism which independent experts should test.

Not yet established

There is presently insufficient evidence to reach a conclusion.

Standing rules

What the project holds itself to

1

Every claim carries its tier

Nothing is published without a visible evidence classification. A reader should never have to guess whether something is measured or remembered.

2

No causation without a pathway

No effect is attributed to any source unless a physical pathway has been demonstrated, not merely postulated.

3

No numbers without context

A laboratory result is published only with its method, detection limit, sampling date and comparison standard.

4

Controls are mandatory

No observation is described as unusual without a matched comparison outside the area of concern.

5

Negative findings are published

Results that weaken the working hypotheses are published as prominently as results that support them.

6

Sources are named

Every document and observation records where it came from, so that a reader can go and check.

7

Personal data is protected

Names, health information, exact addresses and sensitive wildlife locations are never published.

8

Errors are corrected openly

Corrections appear where the error was, with a dated note. Nothing is quietly amended.

Position

What this site is not

The reason is not timidity. It is that a documented, carefully qualified record is considerably harder to dismiss than an accusation. Regulators act on evidence. Journalists check claims. Experts read method sections. A campaign that overstates its case hands everyone an easy reason to stop reading.

The purpose here is to make the whole pattern visible — a decade of activity, an historic underground mining system, and the ground, water, trees, wildlife, people and homes above it — and then to ask precisely the right questions of precisely the right bodies.