SUMMARY: Agreement is a relationship between statements. Independence concerns how those statements were obtained. A review needs both distinctions before it treats several records as corroboration.
Ask What Each Source Adds
In The Three Witnesses, three fictional records repeat one disputed summary. Their separate document identities make them easy to count, but do not supply separate observations of the journey.
A later record may add useful information about circulation, timing or institutional response while adding nothing about the original event. Name that contribution precisely. A record of an alert being issued establishes a different fact from a record of the event described in the alert.
Independence Belongs to the Claim
Do not label an entire publication or department independent for every purpose. Two reports may share one quoted statement but separately observe another detail. The dependency question belongs to the particular claim being assessed.
For a consequential statement, identify its immediate source and follow references as far as the available record allows. Note where the trail stops. An unexplained origin is unknown, not automatically independent and not automatically fabricated.
Do Not Turn a Diagram Into a Verdict
A dependency map can reveal that three citations rest on one source. It cannot by itself determine whether that source is correct. Nor should a reviewer replace the mistaken count with an arbitrary numerical confidence score.
Describe the support in ordinary terms: one reported observation, repeated in two later records, with no separate confirmation located in the reviewed material. That statement gives the next reviewer a bounded starting point rather than a manufactured probability.
Correct Where the Count Matters
If a decision relied on apparent corroboration, changing the source list is not enough. Identify the decision owner and whether the unsupported confidence affected the outcome. Preserve the earlier reasoning as a historical record without continuing to present it as current support.
This extends The Provenance Trail by focusing on shared origins within one review. Use Map Source Dependency for a synthetic exercise. It is a review method, not a conclusion about a real allegation or organization.