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Citations and Grounding

Why This Matters

Reports can sound confident even when claims are weakly supported. A grounding audit forces each important claim to point back to a source: code output, a table, a figure, a citation, or a stated limitation.

Citation Workflow

The course uses BibTeX references through references.bib. A report YAML header can include:

---
title: "Project Report"
format: html
bibliography: ../../references.bib
---

Then cite a source in text:

The NHANES classroom example is derived from CDC/NCHS NHANES public-use data [@cdc-nhanes].

If your project uses a different source, add the relevant bibliography entry to the report’s local references.bib or to the project bibliography.

Grounding Audit

For A9, choose at least three claims and trace them.

Claim Evidence type Evidence location Decision
Mean BMI differs by income group. Figure/table Results plot and summary table Keep, with descriptive wording
Income causes BMI differences. None Not supported Remove or rewrite
The summary is unweighted. Methods/code Methods paragraph and code Keep

What Counts as Evidence

Evidence can be:

  • a code-generated table;
  • a code-generated figure;
  • a data source citation;
  • a methods paragraph;
  • a limitation statement;
  • a reproducibility log.

Evidence is not:

  • an AI-generated sentence without verification;
  • a visual impression with no source;
  • a claim copied from a website without citation;
  • a dashboard interaction that cannot be reproduced.

AI-Use Check

If AI helped draft report prose, audit the generated text for:

  • invented sources;
  • stronger claims than the code supports;
  • causal language;
  • missing limitations;
  • mismatched variable names or statistics.

Before Moving On

If a claim cannot be grounded, do one of three things:

  • add the missing evidence;
  • soften the wording;
  • remove the claim.