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As the Chicago Cubs held off the Cleveland Indians in extra innings to win the seventh game of the 2016 World Series — and the Cubs’ first championship since 1908 — Twitter users began circulating a tweet that had seemingly anticipated the circumstances of Chicago’s win back in November of 2014: 2016 World Series. Cubs …
On 1 November 2016, the scientific journal Lancet Psychiatry published a Viewpoint article (essentially a think piece) by a team of psychiatry researchers that mused about the potentially powerful role Facebook and other social media websites could someday play in nearly all aspects of psychiatry. In that article, they stated that : We argue that …
Claim: Men abandoned a groundbreaking study on male birth control due to side effects such as mood changes, muscle pain, and acne. Mixture WHAT’S TRUE: A study investigating an injectable mixture of hormones aimed at temporarily reducing male sperm count to prevent pregnancy was shut down early, based on concerns about adverse effects raised by …
Claim: Parents should keep any eye out for drug-laced Gummy bears and ecstasy (MDMA) disguised as Halloween candy being distributed to trick-or-treaters. mostly false WHAT’S TRUE: Some forms of Ecstasy are brightly colored and look like candy. WHAT’S FALSE: These forms of Ecstasy are not “new,” they’re not intended to appeal to children, and they’re …
Claim: Queen Elizabeth II has offered to restore British rule over the United States of America. false Origin:On 29 October 2016, the New Yorker riffed on a common theme this election season, that of Great Britain’s monarch offering to reclaim the empire’s former North American colonies after the latter’s experiment in democracy proved a failure: …
In September 2016, Wilma Price was driving through a Walmart parking lot in Huntsville, Texas, when she spotted a homeless man named Patrick holding a sign that said, “Dog in pound. Need help.” Price, who runs a rescue called Mr. K’s Pet Shelter, stopped to help. She said Patrick had been arrested for trespassing and …
Claim: A picture of a man with his head split open documents the effect of marijuana use. FALSE Example: [Collected via Facebook, October 2016] Origin:A widely-circulated Facebook post on 26 October 2016 graphically showed what it described as the effects of marijuana use. The photograph showed a man with a badly damaged scalp and one eye …
Claim: Mike Pence supported “gay conversion” therapy, which involves the use of electroshock therapy. Mixture WHAT’S TRUE: Mike Pence once supported the use of federal funding to treat people “seeking to change their sexual behavior.” WHAT’S FALSE: Pence never stated that he supported the use of electric shocks or “gay conversion” therapy. Example: [Collected via …
Claim: Pat Buchanan said America was better when everybody “knew their place.” FALSE Example: [Collected via e-mail, October 2016] Origin:On 24 October 2016, a “satirical” news site published a story that opened with a shockingly frank quote from conservative commentator and former Republican presidential candidate Pat Buchanan: “Back in the ‘50s everyone knew their place, whites over here, blacks …
Claim: 6,000 Muslim migrants with forged papers were captured trying to cross the U.S.-Mexico border. mostly false Origin:On 24 October 2016, the Conservative Daily Post published a badly-jumbled article that was a mish-mash of information gleaned from other conservative publications, which themselves rehashed a legitimate 16 August 2016 news report about cross-Mexico migration by people from outside the …
Claim: Trump hotels are being renamed to eliminate use of the name ‘Trump.’ MIXTURE WHAT’S TRUE: Trump Hotels announced in September 2016 that they are launching a new hotel brand called “Scion.” WHAT’S FALSE: Donald Trump is not removing his name from established Trump hotels. Origin:On 22 October 2016, the web site Occupy Democrats published …
WalMart is the United States’ largest retailer, and in October that also makes them one of the nation’s largest vendors of Halloween costumes and accessories. One popular type of costume accessory sold by WalMart and other vendors is latex applications that simulate wounds inflicted by gunshots, knives, machetes, razors, burns, vampire bats, and even zombies: …
Claim: An image shows Maria Bartiromo holding a phone decorated with a “Trump/Pence” sticker at the annual Al Smith Dinner. FALSE Origin:As Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton traded jokes, barbs, and joke-shaped barbs at the annual Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner on 20 October 2016, some viewers were focused on a “woman in red” …
Claim: A record number of people were deported from the U.S. during Obama’s tenure as President. true Origin:During the third and final presidential debate on 19 October 2016, Republican nominee Donald Trump remarked that President Barack Obama “has moved millions of people out … millions of people have been moved out of this country.” As …
Claim: A San Francisco tech company is a front for the web site that accused Julian Assange of pedophilia. false Origin:On 19 October 2016, amateur Internet sleuths on the messaging board Reddit compiled a series of happenstance facts that they believed identified a hitherto anonymous software company as a front operation for the dating web …
On 17 October 2016, the document leaking organization WikiLeaks posted an announcement on Twitter that its founder, Julian Assange, had his Internet access cut off by Ecuador. (Assange, who has been granted political asylum granted by Ecuador, has been living in that country’s London embassy since 2012.) That same day, the liberal blog Daily Kos …
Claim: Placing a bar of soap between your bedsheets will help prevent leg cramps. unproven Origin:Many people are plagued by nocturnal leg cramps, those involuntary and agonizing muscle contractions that strike in the depths of the night, waking sleepers with jolts of pain that leave them awash in waves of suffering until the kinks finally …
Claim: A Danish woman fertilized her own eggs with the frozen sperm of her deceased father. false Origin:On 8 October 2016, the World News Daily Report web site published an article reporting that a Danish woman had fertilized her own eggs with the frozen sperm of her deceased father, who whom she had previously engaged …
Claim: A Maryland doctor who participated in a secret surgery to remove a blood clot from Hillary Clinton’s brain died suddenly under mysterious circumstances. false Origin:On 30 September 2016, Dr. Sandeep Sherlekar was found dead in his office at the American Spine Center in Frederick, Maryland. According to local police, evidence gathered at the scene …
On 14 October 2016, Paul Joseph Watson, a writer for the Alex Jones conspiracy web site Infowars posted on Twitter an e-mail sent between Hillary Clinton campaign staffers that had been published by WikiLeaks, along with the insinuation that it furnished proof the New York Times was colluding with the Clinton campaign by “warning” them in …