Definition
Unsupported Claims
An unsupported claim is an assertion in an audit that has no independently verifiable evidence behind it — the audit says it, but nothing observed confirms it.
How it's measured
Canary flags any claim that survives only on the model's say-so: no captured traffic, no matching documentation, no reproducible check. When a claim we would make cannot be evidenced, we hold the verdict rather than publish it.
Examples
‘SOC2 certified’ with no certificate retrieved; ‘no telemetry’ with no capture self-test; ‘review completed’ with no artifact. Each is unsupported until evidenced.
FAQ
- What does Canary do with an unsupported claim?
- It is marked unsupported and excluded from the evidence-backed verdict; if the whole finding rests on it, the verdict is held for human review rather than published.
- Can an audit be confident and still full of unsupported claims?
- Yes — that is the most common failure. Confidence is not evidence.
Related: Integrity Score · Evidence Coverage · Unsupported Claims · Methodology · Benchmarks