How the Scandal Score works

Method version 1.0, 5 November 2026. Every list in the Pantheon ranks ten entries by a Scandal Score from 0 to 100. The score is ours, built from public figures by the method below; each ranking is checked and approved by a human editor before it is published.

What goes in

  • Money on record - 35%. The award, settlement, fine or forfeiture as stated in a primary source - a court record, a regulator's release, an official statement or the original news report - converted to 2026 US dollars with US consumer price index (CPI-U) annual averages; 2025 and 2026 use estimates. Scored on a logarithmic scale, so a $10 billion case does not flatten everything else.
  • Record weight - 20%. How firm the record is: decided by a court or regulator 1.0, admitted by the person 0.8, a filing or charge not yet decided 0.5, reported by a named outlet 0.25.
  • Media velocity - 25%. How many people read the English Wikipedia page about the case or the person in the seven days after it became public (Wikimedia pageview data, available from July 2015). This is a measure of attention, not a source for any fact.
  • Staying power - 10%. Average daily readers of that page a year later.
  • Fallout - 10%. Losses on the record - titles, sponsors, jobs, roles - counted up to five.

Each measure is scaled from 0 to 1 within its list, so scores compare entries in the same list, not across lists. When a measure does not exist for an entry - no money involved, or a case older than the pageview data - its weight is shared out among the other measures, and the entry says so.

Cheating scandals

The cheating list weighs money at 15%, record weight at 25%, media velocity at 35%, staying power at 15% and fallout at 10%. It includes only cases the person admitted publicly or that a court filing or ruling states. Reports and rumours are not enough to be ranked.

What keeps an entry out

  • A money figure or a status that cannot be found, word for word, in the primary source it is attributed to. Encyclopedia entries help us find those sources; they never count as one.
  • Children, deaths and tragedies, health, sexuality, and complainants in sexual-offence cases.
  • Private people who are not public figures.

Updates

Lists are rescored once a month and when a big new case lands. A rescore can move entries up or down; the scoring date is shown on every list. To challenge a figure, write to legal@mrscandal.com - see our corrections policy.