Evidence before interpretation
Methods and evidence policy
MTBNSF is a public-interest screening and hypothesis-generation platform. It displays cited official observations and separately labeled derived and community information. Except where an originating provider expressly says otherwise, it is not a regulatory determination, laboratory identification, health advisory, legal opinion, or proof of cause, source, violation, or liability. Verify important decisions with the linked agency and qualified professionals.
Evidence classes
- Official
- Public agency or provider material retains its preliminary, provisional, revision, certification, latency, and coverage qualifications.
- Research reviewed
- A reviewed research result must preserve geography, covered period, method, limitations, and a source pinpoint before publication.
- Platform derived
- A future calculation must identify inputs, method version, uncertainty, expiry, and non-causal limits.
- Community originated
- Community information remains community-originated and is not proof of identity, source, causation, violation, or responsibility.
- SIMULATED
- Fixed UI examples are confined to Scenario Lab and never represent an observation.
Availability states
- NO_DATA: no reviewed public observation is available.
- STALE: a value is outside its stated freshness window.
- HELD: material is unavailable pending review.
Freshness and corrections
Future observation pages must show source time, retrieval time, freshness, provider qualifications, and correction status. Corrected, superseded, and retracted material remains visibly distinguished.
What a summary does not establish
No summary establishes cause or identifies a source. It is not proof of a violation, liability, current condition, shipment origin, individual train, or regulatory determination.
Financial evidence
Requested, authorized, contracted, invoiced, paid and delivered are separate stages, not additive amounts. Preserve original payee names, currency, reporting periods, credits, partial payments, split allocations and void/reissue relationships.
A missing record is unknown, not zero. A repeated invoice in a packet is not evidence of a second disbursement. Check transaction-era rules and alternative explanations before making a finding. Insufficient prerequisites mean not evaluable.
Separate dimensions of evidence
- Truth state
- OBSERVED, INFERRED, PREDICTED or SIMULATED. An observed record establishes what it reports, not the truth of every allegation.
- Capture and review
- A discovered link, captured bytes, extracted text and reviewed passage describe different work.
- Release and health
- Source health is separate from permission to publish. A reviewed record still needs an authorized release.
History follows source chronology.
Importing an older document later must not make it the newest source version. Unknown dates remain unresolved. Failed retrievals cannot emit removal events.
Map and observation limits
The base map uses generalized geography. No sensor measurement, exposure, source attribution or regulatory exceedance can be inferred from the boundary or proximity alone.