How do you design a RAG system that handles conflicting information across sources?

First detect the conflict, then decide policy. At retrieval, attach metadata to every chunk — source, publish date, authority level. When retrieved chunks disagree, you have options: prefer the most recent or most authoritative source via re-ranking; or surface the disagreement, having the model present both positions with citations rather than silently picking one. Which is right depends on the domain — for policy docs, recency and authority win; for research, showing the debate is more honest. Instruct the model to ground every claim in a cited chunk and to flag when sources conflict instead of blending them into a false consensus. Log conflicts so owners can fix the underlying data. Never let the model average two contradictory facts into a made-up middle.