# How to Verify Search Results Across Finance, Biomedical, and Law

> A number in a filing, a disease in a paper title, and a court ruling each require a different source check. Three worked cases show where search ends and evidence begins.

- Canonical URL: https://www.searchforagents.com/blog/how-to-verify-search-results-across-finance-biomedical-and-law
- Author: Mara Finch, Industry writer
- Published: 2026-09-24
- Updated: 2026-09-24
- Topic: Industry Search
- Review due: 2026-12-24

## Direct answer

An industry search hit leads to a record; it does not prove every claim inside it. Verify a financial figure in its dated SEC filing and units, a U.S. treatment indication in the FDA's decision for that date, and a legal holding in the court's opinion. Keep the appropriate identifier—the filing accession and document, PMID or DOI for a study, or court docket—alongside the supporting passage and as-of date.

## Key takeaways

- The provider that finds a record and the authority that establishes a claim can be different organizations.
- Apple's 2025 Services figure is $109,158 million in its filed 10-K; both the fiscal period and reporting units matter.
- A clinical paper covering two diseases did not establish the FDA's approval dates or current age indication for Casgevy.
- A court syllabus is a useful pointer, but the opinion itself sets out the holding and its limits.

A financial figure, a treatment indication, and a legal holding can all appear in search results. They do not have the same evidentiary owner. For a number a company reported, inspect its dated filing. For an FDA approval, read the regulator's decision. For what a court held, read the court's opinion. The search provider is the route to the record; it is not automatically an independent witness to the fact inside it.

We followed three questions through available discovery surfaces and checked the answer in the issuing record. These are **worked source checks, not a benchmark or a ranking of providers**. The dates and queries below describe checks made on 24 September 2026; search results may change.

**Disclosure:** Search for Agents is produced by Valyu. We tested Valyu only in the biomedical case below and report both a missed target paper and useful FDA results. No provider was scored across all three domains.

| Question | Discovery route | Record that can settle it |
| --- | --- | --- |
| How much Services revenue did Apple report for fiscal 2025? | SEC EDGAR submissions and the filing | Apple's specific 2025 Form 10-K, including its units and fiscal period |
| Was Casgevy approved for both sickle cell disease and transfusion-dependent β-thalassemia in December 2023? | PubMed for the research paper; Valyu web search for FDA records | Separate dated FDA decisions, not the paper title |
| Did *Loper Bright* undo every earlier Chevron-based decision? | A CourtListener case listing and searchable copies | The Supreme Court's opinion, including its paragraph on earlier holdings |

## A financial number needs a filing, a period, and a unit

[SEC EDGAR's submissions API](https://www.sec.gov/search-filings/edgar-application-programming-interfaces) lets a researcher find a company's filing history by CIK. For Apple, the [submissions record](https://data.sec.gov/submissions/CIK0000320193.json) identifies a **10-K filed 31 October 2025**, accession **0000320193-25-000079**, for a fiscal year ending **27 September 2025**. The filing date and reporting period answer different questions: one says when the record became available; the other says what year the figures describe.

In the [filed 10-K](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/320193/000032019325000079/aapl-20250927.htm), the net-sales-by-category table reports **Services: 109,158**, with the table explicitly labeled **dollars in millions**. That is **$109.158 billion**, not $109,158 or $109,158 billion. The consolidated statement of operations repeats the Services figure in the same filing. Two appearances in one document make the extraction easier to check; they are not two independent sources.

The submissions API supplies form, accession, filing date, period, and document filename. It does not by itself certify every figure someone might extract from the filing. The SEC also notes that its XBRL company-facts APIs select facts using standard taxonomies rather than every company-specific extension. A missing field in one machine-readable route is not evidence that the reported line item is zero. Open the actual filing and retain the table heading, units, accession, and period alongside the number.

That distinction matters especially in historical comparisons. Apple's fiscal **2025** ended in September 2025 and the 10-K was filed in October; it is neither a calendar-year-2025 number nor a figure first reported in 2026. The [pre-earnings research workflow](/blog/how-to-use-an-agent-to-research-a-company-before-earnings) shows how to preserve that distinction in an agent's brief.

## A clinical paper is not an FDA approval

Consider the question: **Was Casgevy approved in the United States for both sickle cell disease and transfusion-dependent β-thalassemia on 8 December 2023?** A [paper indexed in PubMed](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33283989/) is titled *CRISPR-Cas9 Gene Editing for Sickle Cell Disease and β-Thalassemia*. PubMed places it in a January 2021 journal issue and records an earlier electronic publication date of **5 December 2020**. Its PMID is **33283989** and its DOI is **10.1056/NEJMoa2031054**. The title describes research covering two diseases. It does not say which indications the FDA had approved by a later date.

We tried the title query **“Frangoul CRISPR-Cas9 Gene Editing for Sickle Cell Disease and beta-Thalassemia”** in two discovery paths. PubMed's E-utilities search returned the paper's PMID among five results. A Valyu **biomedical** search did not return that paper among the first six results we inspected; it returned related research instead. Those are observations about this query and result cutoff, **not a general measure of either provider's coverage or relevance**. Valyu's biomedical sources include a PubMed-derived collection, so two appearances of the same record would not be independent corroboration in any case.

For the *approval* question we changed the search target, rather than asking a paper index to establish a regulator's decision. A Valyu **web** search with `site:fda.gov`, both historical dates, and the two indications in the query surfaced the [FDA's 16 January release](https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/fda-roundup-january-16-2024) and the December and January approval letters. The [8 December 2023 approval letter](https://www.fda.gov/media/174618/download) authorized Casgevy for sickle cell disease in patients **12 and older with recurrent vaso-occlusive crises**. The [16 January 2024 approval letter](https://www.fda.gov/media/175482/download) added **transfusion-dependent β-thalassemia**, then for patients **12 and older**. So the answer to “both on 8 December?” is **no**.

Time changes the answer again. A [1 July 2026 supplement approval](https://www.fda.gov/media/193444/download) extended both indications to children aged **two to under 12**, alongside the earlier approvals for patients 12 and older. The [FDA's accompanying announcement](https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/fda-approves-first-gene-therapy-young-children-sickle-cell-disease) describes the resulting indications as covering patients **aged two and older**. The 2023 and 2024 age thresholds above are historical, not a statement of the indication as of this article's publication. PubMed identifies a study, Valyu helped find regulator documents in this check, and the FDA records establish the dated approvals.

## A case summary is not the court's holding

A [CourtListener case listing](https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/9986254/loper-bright-enterprises-v-raimondo/) for *Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo* appeared in public search results. We could not inspect that listing directly, so it supplies no evidence for the legal claims here. To check what the Supreme Court decided on **28 June 2024** in docket **22-451**, we used the [Court's own PDF](https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/22-451_7m58.pdf).

The PDF begins with a syllabus and expressly says that this headnote **“constitutes no part of the opinion of the Court.”** In the opinion itself, the majority states: **“Chevron is overruled.”** It says courts must exercise independent judgment about statutory authority and may not defer to an agency interpretation merely because a statute is ambiguous.

Stopping at that sentence would still miss a consequential qualification. The same majority opinion says it **does not call into question prior cases that relied on Chevron**; holdings that specific agency actions were lawful remain subject to statutory *stare decisis*. “Chevron was overruled” is supported. “Every previously upheld agency action was invalidated” is not. The docket, decision date, opinion text, and the distinction between the syllabus and the majority's reasoning all belong in an evidence trail. This is a source-verification example, not advice about a particular dispute.

## A practical record for an industry-search claim

For each consequential answer, keep an evidence record that someone else can reopen:

1. **The exact question and as-of date.** “Was Casgevy approved for both indications on 8 December 2023?” differs from “What is its current U.S. indication?”
2. **The discovery route.** Record the provider, query, filters, and date searched. A search hit identifies a lead; it does not transfer the record owner's authority to the provider.
3. **The stable identifier.** Use a CIK and filing accession, PMID and DOI, or court and docket number to find the same record again.
4. **The supporting passage and scope.** Store the table units and fiscal period, the indication and approval date, or the part of the opinion containing the holding and its limit.
5. **The remaining uncertainty.** Note a missing filing amendment, inaccessible full text, a changed label, or a legal qualification before making a stronger claim.

The conclusion is not that one search provider should handle everything. Industry search is a handoff from discovery to domain-specific verification. The useful result is the one that gets the agent to a record it can actually check—and helps it recognize what that record cannot prove. The [Web Search investigation](/blog/when-can-an-agent-trust-a-web-search-result) applies the same discipline to a public holiday calendar; the [clinical-trials search workflow](/blog/how-to-use-an-agent-to-find-clinical-trials) goes deeper on checking study records.

*Method note: Checks were made on 24 September 2026 using SEC submissions and the filed 10-K, PubMed E-utilities, Valyu biomedical and web search, an indexed CourtListener case listing, FDA releases, and the Supreme Court opinion. The Valyu and PubMed examples used task-specific search modes, not a controlled head-to-head benchmark. Search results and current regulatory labels can change.*

## Definitions

- **Filing accession number:** An SEC identifier for a particular submission. Pair it with the primary-document filename to identify the specific filed report within that submission.
- **PMID:** A PubMed record identifier for a publication. It locates a bibliographic record, not a regulatory approval or an independent replication of a study.

## Frequently asked questions

### Can a PubMed paper prove that a treatment was approved?

No. A paper can report clinical research and identify its publication, but the FDA's dated approval decision and labeling establish a U.S. approval and its indication at a particular time.

### Can a search summary replace a company's filed 10-K?

No. For a reported number, check the specific filing, period, table, units, and any subsequent amendments. A search result can lead to that record but cannot establish which number or vintage was reported.

### Does a court syllabus count as the court's opinion?

No. The Supreme Court's own Loper Bright PDF expressly says its syllabus is not part of the opinion. Use the court's opinion for the holding and its qualifications.

## Sources

1. [EDGAR Application Programming Interfaces](https://www.sec.gov/search-filings/edgar-application-programming-interfaces) — U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission
2. [Apple Inc. submissions history](https://data.sec.gov/submissions/CIK0000320193.json) — U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission
3. [Apple Inc. 2025 Form 10-K](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/320193/000032019325000079/aapl-20250927.htm) — U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission
4. [CRISPR-Cas9 Gene Editing for Sickle Cell Disease and β-Thalassemia](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33283989/) — PubMed
5. [PubMed E-utilities: search and record parameters](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK25499/) — National Center for Biotechnology Information
6. [Valyu healthcare search sources](https://docs.valyu.ai/use-cases/healthcare) — Valyu
7. [FDA approves first gene therapies to treat patients with sickle cell disease](https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/fda-approves-first-gene-therapies-treat-patients-sickle-cell-disease) — U.S. Food and Drug Administration
8. [Casgevy sickle cell disease approval letter](https://www.fda.gov/media/174618/download) — U.S. Food and Drug Administration
9. [FDA Roundup: January 16, 2024](https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/fda-roundup-january-16-2024) — U.S. Food and Drug Administration
10. [Casgevy transfusion-dependent beta-thalassemia approval letter](https://www.fda.gov/media/175482/download) — U.S. Food and Drug Administration
11. [FDA approves first gene therapy for young children with sickle cell disease](https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/fda-approves-first-gene-therapy-young-children-sickle-cell-disease) — U.S. Food and Drug Administration
12. [Casgevy pediatric indication supplement approval letter](https://www.fda.gov/media/193444/download) — U.S. Food and Drug Administration
13. [Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, No. 22-451](https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/22-451_7m58.pdf) — Supreme Court of the United States

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