Nick Perry shows how Claude mistakes copied web passages for independent sources, building false confidence in answers. A one-line prompt forces it to trace claims back to their original source, separating verified facts from repeated rumors.
Never ever trust Claude's research without doing this one thing because it's treating rumors as evidence. See, when you ask Claude a question, it pulls the highest-ranking passages from the internet, and if the same claim shows up on 10 websites, Claude counts that as 10 confirmations. But all 10 copied from the same anonymous post, so you get a confident answer backed by 10 sources that trace back to one person who made it up. Now, one line you add after your prompt fixes it, or you can use a skill I built called Rumor Killer. That line tells Claude to trace every claim back to its earliest source, separate what's confirmed from what's being repeated, and flag anything it couldn't verify. So instead of 10 links to one anonymous post, you get what's real, what's unconfirmed, and what's just a rumor. Comment rumor, and I'll send you the exact line plus the skill.
