Method
How PaperFren labels evidence
Every discovery carries one evidence label. The labels are not a ladder from weak to strong. They answer three different questions, and a development gets the label that says the most useful thing about it. Contested is not weaker than emerging; strengthening is not stronger than established. Read the label with its question.
What a label does not tell you
- It does not rank one discovery above another. Two labels from different questions cannot be compared.
- It is not a count. Three supporting papers do not make a finding established if they share a lab and a design.
- It does not grade the paper. Study quality, relevance and independence are described on each discovery page under Evidence and Sources.
How much evidence
How much independent evidence exists for the finding. This is about coverage, replication and independence of the studies, not about how large the effect is.
- Evidence: Preliminary
- A single study, a pilot, or a small sample. The finding is real as reported but has not been independently replicated, so it should not be treated as settled. Preliminary says nothing about whether the result will hold up; it says nobody has checked yet.
- Evidence: Emerging
- Two or more studies point the same way, often from the same group or with related designs. The picture is forming but has not been tested across populations, measures or labs. Emerging is a description of coverage, not of effect size.
- Evidence: Established
- The finding has been replicated by independent groups using different designs, and reviews or meta-analyses agree on the direction. Established does not mean beyond revision; it means that revising it would take substantial new evidence.
What moved
What this particular development did to the picture. A label here says which way the evidence moved, and nothing about how mature the whole body is.
- Evidence: Strengthening
- This development added evidence in the direction the existing literature already leaned, for example a replication, a larger sample, or a converging method. Strengthening describes what changed, not how mature the whole body is: a strengthening finding can still be young.
- Evidence: Novel
- This development opened a question or reported a result the indexed literature had not addressed. Novel is about what moved, not about quality: a novel result may be preliminary in maturity and should be read with that in mind.
Whether studies agree
Whether qualified studies asking the same question reach conflicting conclusions. A disagreement label is a flag that the question is live, not a demerit.
- Evidence: Contested
- Qualified studies asking the same question reach conflicting or incompatible conclusions, and the disagreement is not explained by obvious differences in population, measure or design. Contested is not a mark against the development; it is a flag that the question is live and the discovery page shows the conflicting papers.
On concept pages
Concept pages do not use these labels. Each claim there lists the studies that support it, challenge it, or qualify its scope, with a note on what each qualifying study contributes. The counts next to a claim are how many studies are cited in each role; they are not a strength score.