BIG Checker™ Has Grown Beyond Money
The agency-preserving claim checker for wealth, health and everything in between
Most misleading communications do not begin with a lie.
They begin with something true.
A scientific finding. A regulatory approval. A manufacturing certificate. A respected institution. A real risk. A genuine human fear.
Then, somewhere between the evidence and the conclusion, the story takes a step the evidence has not earned.
That step is often where persuasion does its most effective work. It is also where most conventional fact-checking stops being useful.
Today, the Academy of Life Planning is launching the latest version of BIG Checker™—expanded from a financial narrative analyser into an agency-preserving claim checker for wealth, health and everything in between.
It is free to use. No account is required.
And it does not tell you what to think.
It helps you see where the evidence ends—and where your own judgement needs to begin.
A familiar health claim
To test the new health analysis, I gave BIG Checker™ a Biorali UK promotion for beetroot capsules.
The communication linked beetroot, dietary nitrates and nitric oxide with claims about circulation, energy, joint comfort and morning stiffness in people over 60. It also presented manufacturing certifications, customer approval, a countdown timer and a scarcity message.
Some of the building blocks were real.
Dietary nitrate from beetroot can raise nitric oxide levels, and nitric oxide plays a role in vascular function. Manufacturing certifications can also tell us something useful about production processes, food safety or sourcing.
But those facts do not automatically establish that this particular product, in this particular form and dose, will produce the specific outcomes described for the people being targeted.
That was the evidence breakpoint.
BIG Checker™ classified the communication as High Narrative Risk.
That is not a verdict that the product does not work. Nor is it an allegation that the advertiser is lying.
It means the promotional conclusion appeared to travel further than the evidence presented could carry it.
Where the evidence ended
The report identified several questions a reader might reasonably want answered.
Was there published clinical evidence for this specific product, rather than beetroot generally?
Was 1,300 mg of dried beetroot powder comparable with the forms and doses used in relevant studies?
Did the manufacturing certifications establish clinical effectiveness, or only how the product was made?
Were joint stiffness, fatigue or circulation concerns symptoms that should first be discussed with a GP?
The communication did not appear to offer those distinctions or alternatives.
Instead, the reader was moved through a familiar chain:
Science supports an ingredient.
This product contains the ingredient.
Therefore, the science proves the product will deliver the advertised outcome.
But each step requires evidence of its own.
Manufacturing quality is not clinical efficacy. A biological mechanism is not a demonstrated consumer outcome. Evidence about an ingredient is not automatically evidence about every product containing it.
The report also found that emotion and urgency were helping the argument along: age-specific vulnerability, the promise of feeling more like yourself, social proof, a countdown timer and an “89% sold” indicator.
Remove those devices and a simpler proposition remains: dried beetroot powder may support nitric oxide production.
That may still be of interest.
But it is not the same claim.
The subject changes. The persuasion architecture does not.
This is why BIG Checker™ has moved beyond financial services.
The same structure appears across our lives.
An investment promotion highlights returns but makes charges difficult to see.
An adviser letter asserts suitability without showing how it was established.
A regulator’s announcement borrows the language of consumer protection while leaving institutional incentives unexamined.
A supplement advert moves from ingredient science to product certainty.
A technology company presents adoption as inevitability and calls it choice.
Different subject. Same architecture.
People are often given something that looks like information but behaves like promotion. Authority is borrowed. Options disappear. Emotion substitutes for evidence. The desired conclusion arrives before the reader has been equipped to judge it.
The asymmetry is not merely informational.
It is architectural.
The communicator designed the path. The reader is expected to walk it.
BIG Checker™ is designed to make that path visible.
The B-O-G framework
Every analysis now uses six lenses:
- Basis: What is actually being claimed, and what evidence genuinely supports it?
- Options: What realistic alternatives, comparisons or choices have been omitted?
- Gap: Where does demonstrated evidence end and inference begin?
- Emotion: Are fear, hope, grief, urgency or flattery doing work that evidence should be doing?
- Authority: Is expertise being borrowed or transferred to a question it does not answer?
- Agency: Does the communication leave you better able to decide independently—or simply more likely to comply?
The framework does more than score a communication.
It identifies what you are actually receiving: information, education, guidance, promotion, regulated advice or a personal recommendation.
It generates better questions to ask.
It also rewrites the central message in a more agency-centred form, allowing you to compare persuasion with informed communication.
For health and wellbeing claims, the latest version goes further. It looks for five recurring patterns:
- ingredient-level science being transferred to product-level claims
- two unattractive choices being used to make the promoted product look like the only sensible third option
- legitimate credentials being used to imply an authority they do not possess
- claims escalating from ingredient, to mechanism, to outcome without evidence at each step
- fear, scarcity, testimonials or urgency taking the place of clinical support
You do not need to know the technical names for these patterns.
You only need a way to see them.
A better-question machine
We are entering an age in which persuasive communication can be produced, personalised and tested at extraordinary speed.
AI will make information cheaper.
It will also make influence cheaper.
The public response cannot be to outsource every judgement to another authority. That simply creates a new dependency.
Nor can a tool reliably pronounce a final truth on every financial, medical, regulatory or public claim.
The more useful intervention is to improve the quality of the reader’s questions.
That is the role of BIG Checker™.
You can paste text, scan a webpage or upload a PDF. The tool produces a plain-English assessment, B-O-G scores, an evidence-breakpoint analysis, better questions and an agency-centred rewrite.
Reports can be saved privately on your own device or downloaded for discussion with a professional.
BIG Checker™ is not a legal adviser, financial adviser, medical adviser or fact-checking authority. In health matters, it should support better conversations with qualified clinicians, not replace them.
It is not the truth machine.
It is the better-question machine.
Try BIG Checker™
The latest version is live now at bigchecker.app.
Try it with an investment brochure, supplement advert, adviser communication, press release, regulatory announcement, company report, news story or public statement.
Then ask one question:
Where does the evidence end—and where does my judgement begin?
BIG Checker™ is one of the tools within Academy OS. To access the complete suite, visit Academy OS. Every Academy OS app is free to use on the web.
Agency before advice.
Academy of Life Planning 