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FactAppeal: Identifying Epistemic Factual Appeals in News Media

Guy Mor-Lan, Tamir Sheafer, Shaul R. Shenhav · Oct 12, 2025 · Citations: 0

How to use this page

Low trust

Use this as background context only. Do not make protocol decisions from this page alone.

Best use

Background context only

What to verify

Validate the evaluation procedure and quality controls in the full paper before operational use.

Evidence quality

Low

Derived from extracted protocol signals and abstract evidence.

Abstract

How is a factual claim made credible? We propose the novel task of Epistemic Appeal Identification, which identifies whether and how factual statements have been anchored by external sources or evidence. To advance research on this task, we present FactAppeal, a manually annotated dataset of 3,226 English-language news sentences. Unlike prior resources that focus solely on claim detection and verification, FactAppeal identifies the nuanced epistemic structures and evidentiary basis underlying these claims and used to support them. FactAppeal contains span-level annotations which identify factual statements and mentions of sources on which they rely. Moreover, the annotations include fine-grained characteristics of factual appeals such as the type of source (e.g. Active Participant, Witness, Expert, Direct Evidence), whether it is mentioned by name, mentions of the source's role and epistemic credentials, attribution to the source via direct or indirect quotation, and other features. We model the task with a range of encoder models and generative decoder models in the 2B-9B parameter range. Our best performing model, based on Gemma 2 9B, achieves a macro-F1 score of 0.73.

Abstract-only analysis — low confidence

All signals on this page are inferred from the abstract only and may be inaccurate. Do not use this page as a primary protocol reference.

  • This paper looks adjacent to evaluation work, but not like a strong protocol reference.
  • The available metadata is too thin to trust this as a primary source.

Should You Rely On This Paper?

This paper is adjacent to HFEPX scope and is best used for background context, not as a primary protocol reference.

Best use

Background context only

Use if you need

A secondary eval reference to pair with stronger protocol papers.

Main weakness

This paper looks adjacent to evaluation work, but not like a strong protocol reference.

Trust level

Low

Usefulness score

0/100 • Low

Treat as adjacent context, not a core eval-method reference.

Human Feedback Signal

Not explicit in abstract metadata

Evaluation Signal

Detected

Usefulness for eval research

Adjacent candidate

Extraction confidence 35%

What We Could Verify

These are the protocol signals we could actually recover from the available paper metadata. Use them to decide whether this paper is worth deeper reading.

Human Feedback Types

missing

None explicit

No explicit feedback protocol extracted.

"We propose the novel task of Epistemic Appeal Identification, which identifies whether and how factual statements have been anchored by external sources or evidence."

Evaluation Modes

partial

Automatic Metrics

Includes extracted eval setup.

"We propose the novel task of Epistemic Appeal Identification, which identifies whether and how factual statements have been anchored by external sources or evidence."

Quality Controls

missing

Not reported

No explicit QC controls found.

"We propose the novel task of Epistemic Appeal Identification, which identifies whether and how factual statements have been anchored by external sources or evidence."

Benchmarks / Datasets

missing

Not extracted

No benchmark anchors detected.

"We propose the novel task of Epistemic Appeal Identification, which identifies whether and how factual statements have been anchored by external sources or evidence."

Reported Metrics

partial

F1, F1 macro

Useful for evaluation criteria comparison.

"We propose the novel task of Epistemic Appeal Identification, which identifies whether and how factual statements have been anchored by external sources or evidence."

Rater Population

partial

Domain Experts

Helpful for staffing comparability.

"Active Participant, Witness, Expert, Direct Evidence), whether it is mentioned by name, mentions of the source's role and epistemic credentials, attribution to the source via direct or indirect quotation, and other features."

Human Feedback Details

  • Uses human feedback: No
  • Feedback types: None
  • Rater population: Domain Experts
  • Expertise required: General

Evaluation Details

  • Evaluation modes: Automatic Metrics
  • Agentic eval: None
  • Quality controls: Not reported
  • Evidence quality: Low
  • Use this page as: Background context only

Protocol And Measurement Signals

Benchmarks / Datasets

No benchmark or dataset names were extracted from the available abstract.

Reported Metrics

f1f1 macro

Research Brief

Metadata summary

We propose the novel task of Epistemic Appeal Identification, which identifies whether and how factual statements have been anchored by external sources or evidence.

Based on abstract + metadata only. Check the source paper before making high-confidence protocol decisions.

Key Takeaways

  • We propose the novel task of Epistemic Appeal Identification, which identifies whether and how factual statements have been anchored by external sources or evidence.
  • To advance research on this task, we present FactAppeal, a manually annotated dataset of 3,226 English-language news sentences.
  • Unlike prior resources that focus solely on claim detection and verification, FactAppeal identifies the nuanced epistemic structures and evidentiary basis underlying these claims and used to support them.

Researcher Actions

  • Compare this paper against nearby papers in the same arXiv category before using it for protocol decisions.
  • Validate inferred eval signals (Automatic metrics) against the full paper.
  • Use related-paper links to find stronger protocol-specific references.

Caveats

  • Generated from abstract + metadata only; no PDF parsing.
  • Signals below are heuristic and may miss details reported outside the abstract.

Research Summary

Contribution Summary

  • We propose the novel task of Epistemic Appeal Identification, which identifies whether and how factual statements have been anchored by external sources or evidence.
  • To advance research on this task, we present FactAppeal, a manually annotated dataset of 3,226 English-language news sentences.
  • Our best performing model, based on Gemma 2 9B, achieves a macro-F1 score of 0.73.

Why It Matters For Eval

  • Abstract shows limited direct human-feedback or evaluation-protocol detail; use as adjacent methodological context.

Researcher Checklist

  • Gap: Human feedback protocol is explicit

    No explicit human feedback protocol detected.

  • Pass: Evaluation mode is explicit

    Detected: Automatic Metrics

  • Gap: Quality control reporting appears

    No calibration/adjudication/IAA control explicitly detected.

  • Gap: Benchmark or dataset anchors are present

    No benchmark/dataset anchor extracted from abstract.

  • Pass: Metric reporting is present

    Detected: f1, f1 macro

Related Papers

Papers are ranked by protocol overlap, extraction signal alignment, and semantic proximity.

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