Knowledge Atlas

Trust

How Knowledge Atlas evaluates knowledge

We want you to be able to trust what you read here, and to check it yourself. Every topic page tells you how strong its evidence is, where each fact comes from, and how the page was made.

The six evidence levels

Each topic carries one of six levels. It describes the strength and quality of the evidence we could find. It is our editorial classification, not a scientific certificate, and it never claims absolute truth.

  1. Level 1 · Established

    Supported by extensive evidence and broad scientific consensus.

    Knowledge supported by overwhelming evidence: repeated observation and experiment, mathematical proof, or broad scientific consensus. We only use this level when strong authoritative or scholarly sources back the page.

    Typical sources
    Fundamental mathematics, long-tested physical laws, repeatedly verified scientific findings.
    Examples on this site
    Aerodynamics, Algebra, Bernoulli's Principle, Buoyancy and 30 more
    Limits
    Established knowledge still has a scope, and science can refine it. "Established" describes the strength of the evidence, not a guarantee that every detail on the page is perfect.

  2. Level 2 · Authoritative

    Supported by highly reputable institutions such as government agencies, universities or standards bodies.

    The page rests on sources from institutions whose job is to know the subject: government and intergovernmental agencies, universities, scientific institutions, standards organizations, professional bodies and official technical documentation.

    Typical sources
    NASA, the NIH, EASA, a university department, an official standard or product documentation.
    Examples on this site
    Aerospace Engineering, Aircraft, Arduino, Drones and 7 more
    Limits
    Institutions can be wrong or out of date, and official guidance changes. Authoritative sources can also describe open questions, which is why source quality and certainty are kept separate.

  3. Level 3 · Scholarly

    Supported by academic sources such as university textbooks and peer-reviewed research.

    The page rests on academic material: peer-reviewed papers and journals, university textbooks, academic publications and recognized researchers.

    Typical sources
    Peer-reviewed university textbooks (such as OpenStax), journal articles, scholarly encyclopedias.
    Examples on this site
    Economics, Isaac Newton, Johannes Kepler, Philosophy and 2 more
    Limits
    Scholarly sources simplify, and textbooks can lag behind current research. A single paper is not the same as a settled consensus.

  4. Level 4 · Reliable

    Supported by reputable educational or reference sources with good editorial standards.

    The page rests on reputable secondary sources: established educational organizations, museums, professional publications, high-quality specialist sites and respected reference works.

    Typical sources
    National museums and galleries, established encyclopedias, reputable science and education publishers.
    Examples on this site
    Visual Arts
    Limits
    These sources are trustworthy summaries rather than primary evidence, and some subjects (like art history) involve interpretation as well as facts.

  5. Level 5 · Developing

    The knowledge here is still emerging, incomplete, contested or open to interpretation.

    Information exists, but the subject is emerging, actively researched, contested, based on limited evidence, or depends on interpretation. Pages at this level explain the uncertainty.

    Typical sources
    Recent research, ongoing scientific debates, fields where experts disagree.
    Examples on this site
    No pages at this level yet.
    Limits
    Expect this page to change as understanding improves. It may describe several competing views.

  6. Level 6 · Limited Sources

    We could not identify sufficiently authoritative sources supporting this topic. This page is provided for orientation and should be treated as introductory.

    This does not mean the information is false. It means we could not find sufficiently authoritative or reliable sources, but the topic still matters for the map. Such pages may rely on secondary or community-maintained sources such as Wikipedia, and say so openly.

    Typical sources
    Wikipedia, specialist community material, secondary references.
    Examples on this site
    No pages at this level yet.
    Limits
    Treat the page as a starting point for orientation, not as a reference. Check the sources yourself.

Evidence level is not map depth. Topic pages also show a depth (for example "Depth 4"), which only says how far down the map a topic sits. A very specific topic can have strong evidence, and a broad one can have weak evidence.

Source quality is not the same as certainty

We keep two questions separate, then combine them into the level you see:

  • Who produced the source? A space agency, a university textbook, a museum, a community wiki.
  • How established is the knowledge itself? Settled for centuries, broadly accepted, or still being worked out.

These don't always line up. A highly authoritative institution can publish about an open research question, and that page will be marked Developing no matter who wrote the source. A very well-established fact can be explained by a modest source. The level reflects both, and each topic page explains why it has its level.

Levels 2 to 4 describe the kind of source a page rests on (institutional, academic or reputable secondary). They are not a strict ranking of truth: a peer-reviewed study is not "less true" than a government web page.

How we choose sources

Every source belongs to a publisher, and every publisher has a class:

  • Authoritative Government and intergovernmental agencies, universities, standards and professional bodies, official documentation.
  • Scholarly Peer-reviewed journals, university textbooks, academic publishers.
  • Reliable Museums, established reference works, reputable educational and specialist publishers.
  • Limited Community-maintained or secondary material, such as Wikipedia.

We prefer the strongest sources available. Limited sources such as Wikipedia may only be used on pages that are openly marked Level 6 · Limited Sources, and we say so on the page. We never present Wikipedia as authoritative just to make a page look more credible. Some official websites can't be read by our checking tools; that doesn't make them wrong, so we confirm the same facts through another credible source we can open.

A topic can stay on the map even when strong sources aren't available, provided that limitation is clearly disclosed. Health and other sensitive topics are held to a stricter standard: they may only rely on authoritative or scholarly sources, and are never published at Level 6.

How a page is made

  1. Sources first. We gather sources before writing, and write only what they support.
  2. Original writing. Pages are written with AI assistance as original explanations. Sources are used for verification and further reading; we don't copy their text, and we quote sparingly: at most a few short, cited passages per page, such as the exact wording of a law.
  3. Numbered citations. Factual statements link to their sources, and our publishing system refuses a page that cites a source it doesn't list.
  4. A separate source check. Each cited source is opened again, and the page is checked against it by an automated reviewer (an AI model reading the source). On pages checked with our newer method, every cited sentence must also be matched to an exact quote from the source before the page can be published. Anything only partly supported is reworded or removed. This check is good but not perfect, which is why we show you the sources.
  5. An evidence level is assigned, with a written reason.
  6. Release. New pages are published in batches approved by the project's owner. Pages are not individually reviewed by a subject expert, and we will never claim they are.

What we don't do

  • We don't fabricate citations, authors, books, papers, statistics or quotes.
  • We don't copy other sites' text.
  • We don't claim human expert review that hasn't happened.
  • We don't let money influence which sources we cite or which evidence level a page gets.
  • We don't list the institutions we mention as partners: we are not affiliated with them.

Found a mistake? Please tell us through the feedback form.