Principles

Galatine's impartiality rests on rules that are the same for every piece of the lab's work: research, work for a client, training, publications and software.

Fact apart from assessment

Fact, assessment and hypothesis are marked separately. A fact carries its source and the grade of that source; a judgement is marked as opinion.

Alternatives and indicators

A desired scenario is never presented as the most likely one. Every key conclusion comes with its grounds, its alternatives, its uncertainties and the indicators that will confirm or refute it.

Independent conclusions

The lab prepares analysis and options for a decision, and the client takes the decision. The lab makes proposals and recommendations on an open request, and the client is disclosed.

Open, lawful sources

Registers, court rulings, procurement, accounts, the press, the blockchain: sources anyone may lawfully read. Every statement in a report leads to its source.

People in a public role

Information about people is used within their public role: an owner, a director, a signatory, a party to a ruling. On a blockchain it is an address and a transaction. The lab approaches people openly and in its own name.

Before collecting information about a specific person, the analyst answers these questions:

• which public role of the person the information concerns
• which question of the work has no answer without it
• whether it touches the person's family or others who hold no public role
• what harm collecting and publishing it could cause the person and the source
• whether it is out of date: does the person still hold the role

Information unconnected with a public role, and information the work can do without, is not collected.

Public communication

• Corrections are published visibly, and the earlier text is never quietly replaced.
• Funding of a study or a public format by a single party is disclosed in the material itself.
• The lab's analytical brand is never used for party campaigning.
• Public material goes out after an independent review and an editorial check.

A result anyone can check

The methodology is published. Every statement shows what it rests on, so an outsider can check the result without taking the organisation's word for it.

The principles in the tools

The lab's tools are built on the same rules. In CATK every record shows how far its verification has gone: the source is named, a document is attached, a verification task is closed, a second person has confirmed.

The tool shows no number that cannot be computed from the data. Its proposals change a record only after the analyst decides.