What is The Forensic Funnel Really?

Indeed, although we see many high rates of literacy across states, we are seeing the highest rates of illiteracy now than ever before. We are in an age of cognitive dissonance and lack of critical thinking. At the end of the day all of us can throw our hats down and say “it is what it is” but shall we give up so easily?

We won’t. That’s why we do what we do. What if we told you that we could improve your intellectual and cognitive abilities and help you achieve brilliance? Don’t believe us dear reader? Allow us to convince you.

For our students: did you know that research shows that students who participate in competitive debate can see reading improvements equivalent to two-thirds of a full school year of additional learning? This is based off of a major 2023 study published in the journal Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis. The study found that debate increased English Language Arts (ELA) achievement by 0.13 standard deviations. For a typical ninth-grade student, that is equivalent to roughly 68% (or two-thirds) of a full year’s worth of average learning.

The improvements were not in "rote" skills like spelling or punctuation. Instead, the gains were almost entirely concentrated in reading sub-skills involving analysis, argumentation, and critical thinking.

Get this though, the most striking find was that the largest gains occurred among the lowest-achieving students at the start of the study. Students who were in the bottom quartile of reading scores saw improvements nearly double those of their higher-achieving peers.

Indeed, you can find research similar to this that is tangential to the areas we cover: speaking, philosophy, argumentation, etc. Think about it!

Every round begins the same way:

But success comes from knowing what matters.

That skill is rarely taught explicitly. Instead, students are handed files, frameworks, and flows with little explanation of the intellectual machinery underneath them.

The Forensic Funnel is an attempt to teach that machinery.

A funnel is about selection; it is the process of taking vast, chaotic bodies of information, identifying governing assumptions, isolating points of leverage, and distilling everything down to something coherent

In debate, that means winning ballots.
In academics, it means producing original and brilliant insight.
In life, it means not being intellectually overwhelmed by noise.

The Funnel is the difference between having arguments and having control of the argument

Just in case you forgot, The Forensic Funnel serves two overlapping but distinct audiences.

Competitors

Thinkers

These two distinct but related communities are what makes us whole, but at the same time it is hard balancing the two. We can’t just throw graduate level philosophy at high schoolers or expect PhD students to be impressed with basic policy. What’s the solution?

One of the great failures of intellectual education is the false choice between rigor and accessibility.

We reject that.

The Forensic Funnel does the heavy lifting—deep research, dense theory, strategic synthesis—so you don’t have to start from zero. Still, we don’t water things down either. We believe understanding should be earned.

You move at a pace that respects both the seriousness of the material and the reality of being a student, competitor, or lifelong learner

Engaging with The Forensic Funnel means accepting a certain standard.

You will be challenged to:

We believe you can do it— you should too. This is designed to make you better.

Winning rounds matters.
Understanding ideas matters more.

The Forensic Funnel exists for people who refuse to choose between competitive excellence and intellectual integrity and who believe that the best arguments are the ones that survive both scrutiny and pressure.

If that sounds like you, you’re already in the funnel. You’ll love it here