About Questionable Authority

There's a particular kind of frustration that comes from reading a news story about something you actually know, and realizing the reporter got half of it wrong. Or reading a policy brief written by someone who has clearly never set foot near the thing they're writing policy about. That frustration is basically why this site exists.

Questionable Authority covers science, technology, politics, and environmental issues — not as separate beats, but as things that constantly crash into each other. A pipeline approval is an engineering problem and a political problem and an ecological problem all at once. A new energy technology doesn't matter much if the grid regulation won't allow it, or if the economics are built on assumptions that fall apart under scrutiny.

What we actually do here

We report and analyze. We try to get the facts right. When the data points in an uncomfortable direction, we follow it there instead of softening the landing.

You've spent time in labs, in policy rooms, at public hearings where the outcome was already decided, and in places where industrial processes leave marks that don't show up in company press releases. That experience shapes how you read a study, or a regulatory filing, or a politician's claim about what the science says. It's not that credentials make you right. It's that familiarity with how things actually work makes it harder to be fooled by things that sound plausible but aren't.

The name is deliberate. Authority — scientific, governmental, corporate, media — deserves scrutiny. Not reflexive distrust, which is just as lazy as reflexive deference. Scrutiny. Ask who funded the study. Ask what the model assumes. Ask why the agency reversed its position three months after a major donor's lobbying push. These aren't conspiracy questions. They're basic due diligence.

Who this is for

If you want official talking points, there are plenty of places to get them. If you want someone to confirm what you already believe, this probably isn't your site either.

This is for people who are willing to sit with a complicated answer. Who understand that "the science is settled" on climate change doesn't mean every proposed climate solution is sound. Who can hold both "this technology has real promise" and "this company's safety record is genuinely alarming" without needing to resolve the tension into a simple story.

Readers here tend to have backgrounds in technical fields, or work in policy, or are just people who got tired of being talked down to. The writing assumes you're capable of handling actual information.

A note on corrections

We get things wrong sometimes. When that happens, the correction goes in the article, clearly marked, not buried in a footnote. Getting something wrong and fixing it is fine. Pretending it didn't happen is not.

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Questionable Authority is independently run. No investors, no corporate parent, no advertisers with interests in the topics we cover.