GAME BRIEFING
How this lens changes the investigation
A reliable source can be wrong about one event, and an unreliable or compromised source can still provide a true clue. Score the person or system’s reporting history separately from the content, access, timing, and corroboration of the current claim.
Observable clues
- The source’s past accuracy, incentives, access, opportunity, and known contamination.
- Whether the current statement is first-hand, second-hand, inferred, translated, or repeated.
- Whether the claim is specific enough to test.
- Whether independent evidence supports the information rather than merely repeating the same origin.
Evidence tests
- Assign one provisional rating to the source and a separate rating to the information.
- Identify the source’s path to knowledge for this exact claim.
- Check whether corroborating reports are truly independent.
- Revise either rating without forcing the other to change.
Do not assume
- Giving a person one permanent credibility score.
- Assuming professional status guarantees accuracy.
- Assuming distress, diagnosis, prior error, or deception makes every future statement false.
- Counting repeated copies of one report as independent corroboration.
Gameplay outcomes
- Allows a contaminated witness to retain a critical verified clue.
- Prevents a respected official from laundering weak information through status.
- Makes source-handling consequences visible to the player.
FICTIONAL PRACTICE // NO ANSWER STORED
Work the lens before revealing the reasoning
Elias Quill has previously published two overstated stories, but now provides a timestamped image showing a restricted records trolley outside the wrong ward.
Two earlier stories contained unsupported attribution.
The image includes verifiable clock, floor, and badge-reader details.
Elias was physically present in the public corridor.
Administration says his reputation makes the image unreliable.
Rate the source and the image separately.
Reveal the worked result and explanation
Defensible result
Elias may warrant a guarded source-reliability rating, while the image itself can receive moderate-to-high credibility after metadata and scene verification.
Why
- Past overstatement affects confidence in Elias’s unsupported interpretations.
- The current image has its own testable attributes and does not become false because of his reputation.
- The administration’s argument confuses source history with the integrity of a specific artifact.
Common reasoning failure
Discarding independently testable information because the messenger has a mixed history.
Accessibility: The exercise is a static text comparison followed by an optional disclosure containing the worked reasoning. No answer is submitted, scored, timed, or stored.
Privacy: The exercise runs entirely as rendered HTML. PsychologicalWar.org does not receive or retain a visitor answer.
The elevated source set adds an operational explanation without replacing the public evidence chain.
Open access terminal