The school shooting rate in non-Christian Japan is vastly lower than that of mostly Christian Texas.

Explanation: Shotgun owners are also required to store their weapons in a specified locker at their home and report its location to police. Ammunition must be kept in a separate locked safe.

The problem of gun crime in the United States, and in particular mass shootings in schools and other public places, has defied universally accepted solutions for the past couple of decades. One common proposition, particularly popular among conservatives, is that the primary cause of such shootings is a disintegration of traditional morality and Christian values in the United States. That viewpoint found its way into a Texas U.S. Senate election debate in September 2018, when incumbent Republican senator Ted Cruz argued that “removing God from the public square” and “losing the moral foundation of much of our society” were partly to blame for school shootings: Let me say, as the father of two daughters, there is something deeply wrong that we have these shootings. There are a lot of things behind it that have nothing to do with government. They have things to do with things like removing God from the public square, like losing the moral foundation of much of our society, like losing the binds of community and family. On Twitter, John Rehling criticized what he perceived as Cruz’s argument, offering some comparative statistics on religious affiliation and gun crime in Japan and the state of Texas: Ted Cruz said that school shootings take place because we removed “God from the public square.” Texas is 93% Christian and has a fatal school shooting every year. Japan is 2% Christian and has never had a school shooting. Worst theory ever Ted Cruz said that school shootings take place because we removed “God from the public square.” Texas is 93% Christian and has a fatal school shooting every year. Japan is 2% Christian and has never had a school shooting. Worst theory ever.#TXSenateDebate — JRehling (@JRehling) September 22, 2018  Rehling’s tweet was later reposted by the pro-science Facebook page Skepticus, garnering further exposure for his claims:  The numbers included in Rehling’s tweet were very accurate (although not perfectly so), and the best evidence we found in some instances actually offered stronger support for his overall argument: Christians do indeed make up a large majority of residents of Texas, where on average even more than one fatal school shooting takes place every year. Christians likely make up even less than two percent of the population in Japan, which has no recorded instance of a fatal school shooting, and which has a rate of gun death more than 500 times lower than that seen in the United States. “93 percent Christian” This number appears to be a slight exaggeration, but Rehling’s broader point, that Texas is  overwhelmingly Christian, still stands. According to the Pew Research Center’s 2014 “Religious Landscape Study,” 77 percent of Texans identified as Christian, with evangelical Protestants (31 percent) and Catholics (23 percent) making up the bulk of that contingent. This rate of Christian affiliation ranked joint seventh-highest in the United States. (Louisiana had the highest at 86 percent, and Vermont the lowest at 54 percent.) “A fatal school shooting every year” No official government database tracks shootings that take place in schools or colleges in the United States, so it’s not possible to arrive at a definitive number, but the rate mentioned by Rehling for Texas (one fatal school shooting per year) appears to be a slight underestimation. Perhaps the most reliable and comprehensive unofficial source of data on school shootings is the Gun Violence Archive (GVA), which defines a school shooting as “an incident that occurs on property of the elementary, secondary or college campus where there is a death or injury from gunfire.” According to GVA data, Texas experience: So between January 2015 and October 2018, an average of 2.5 fatal school shootings took place in Texas per year, leading to an average of five deaths per year (although the latter figure is heavily skewed by the May 2018 Santa Fe high school shooting, in which 10 people were killed). If one limits the numbers to only include fatal shootings in elementary, middle, and high schools, seven such incidents were recorded between 2015 and 2018, leaving an average of 1.75 shootings per year. Another comprehensive database is the one maintained by Everytown for Gun Safety. Although Everytown is not impartial on the issue of gun violence (they advocate for stricter gun control laws), their database contains good references and sourcing for every such incident, and it also records shootings at colleges as well as elementary and high schools. According to Everytown, Texas schools experienced: Based on those figures, an average of exactly one fatal school shooting per year took place between 2013 and 2018, with an average of 2.5 deaths per year. If one includes suicides, two fatal school shootings occurred per year between 2013 and 2018, accounting for 3.7 deaths per year. Although methodologies and figures vary, Rehling’s claim of “a fatal school shooting every year” in Texas appears to be a very conservative estimate, and likely a significant understatement. Our determination, based on the reliable data sources we consulted, actually provides greater support for Rehling’s broader argument. “2% Christian” This figure actually appears to be a somewhat generous estimate of the prevalence of Christianity in Japanese society. According to the Pew Research Center’s “Global Religious Landscape” study, 1.6 percent of people in Japan identified as Christians in 2010. A November 2017 Pew Research Center presentation cited two sources which gave even lower estimates. According to the University of Michigan’s Japanese General Social Survey, 0.7 percent of Japanese people identified as Christians in 2015, and according to Japanese government research from 2015 the figure was 1.5 percent. Although Rehling’s figure of “2% Christian” appears to be a slight overstatement, our determination once again actually offers greater support to his broader argument. “Has never had a school shooting” We could find no record of a shooting (fatal or otherwise) having taken place at a school or university in Japan in recent memory. Rehling’s assessment is accurate: what is a frequent phenomenon in the United States, including Texas, simply does not happen in Japan. On the whole, Japan has among the lowest rates of gun crime in the developed world. For example, the rate of gun deaths per 100,000 people was 0.02 in Japan in 2014, according to GunPolicy.org, a research initiative run by the University of Sydney, Australia. In the United States, the gun death rate was 10.54 in 2014, a figure that’s more than 500 times higher. A 2016 article on the Japan Times news website asked “What are the chances of a mass shooting in Japan?” and outlined the strict laws and procedures surrounding gun ownership there: In Japan, citizens are banned from possessing, carrying, selling or buying handguns or rifles. Importing gun parts is also prohibited under the Firearm and Sword Control Law. Only licensed hunters are allowed to own shotguns, and the screening process is very strict. Applicants are required to obtain a license from a local government and undergo background checks by police as well as mental and drug tests at hospitals. The gun license must be renewed every three years, and applicants are required to again undergo the various tests.


Rhode Island law aims to prevent suicides at public colleges.

Explanation: Rhode Island is the latest state to require public colleges to do more to prevent suicides.

Rhode Island, Mental health, Health, Gina Raimondo, Suicide prevention, Higher education, Education, University of Rhode Island

Democratic Gov. Gina Raimondo signed a measure into law this month that requires public colleges and universities to establish a plan for promptly addressing students’ mental health needs. The new law discourages relying solely on off-campus services. The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention says 11 states now have a law addressing suicide prevention in higher education. The University of Rhode Island, Rhode Island College and Community College of Rhode Island don’t appear to have suicide prevention policies that meet the new requirement. They do offer counseling and mental health services and support the state’s efforts. URI told lawmakers it was well-positioned to implement the provisions of the legislation and it has resources in place and a system to respond if there’s a concern with a student. CCRI said it’s currently working on a formal policy on suicide prevention. At Rhode Island College, Chantelle Pseekos, director of the counseling center, said she supports any requirement that helps keep students safe and destigmatizes mental health services. “We, as campus communities, can collaboratively lessen the number of suicides that occur,” Pseekos said. The nonprofit Jed Foundation works to prevent suicide among teenagers and young adults. Nance Roy, the foundation’s chief clinical officer, said the law will make schools review their services and identify any gaps. Nicole Gibson, director of state policy and grassroots advocacy at the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, said she likes that Rhode Island’s law encourages schools to look at what they can provide on campus, and not just rely on providers in the community. “That would make seeking help just seem more typical,” she said, adding that the foundation actively supports and tracks suicide prevention bills. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in June that suicide rates have been rising in nearly every state. In Rhode Island, the rate rose about 34 percent from 1999 to 2016, according to the data. The schools must present their plans, along with any new policies and training being added, to legislative leaders and the Rhode Island Council on Postsecondary Education by Jan. 1.


Panel recommends pneumonia vaccine for adult smokers

Explanation: The NY Daily News took a 750-word Associated Press story and chopped it down to 230 words. It lost much of the important meat in this cut – all to save 500 words. Our comments target this butchered Daily News version. The Daily News version cut out these important elements of the original AP story:   cost and cost-effectiveness questions; concerns that the new vaccinations may be considered overtreatment in otherwise healthy younger smokers; the only interview with an independent source; any discussion of the inefficacy of the vaccine in younger people or of the fact that there is no booster available, even though protection drops off after 5-10 years. The chief deficiencies of either version of the article are that the reader is left without a sense of how effective the vaccine might be in the newly-targeted populations. The article could have been improved with an attempt at quantification of benefits or numbers needed to vaccinate as well as with richer interviews of more disinterested experts who could have filled in these areas. Some vague areas in the article are misleading: the vaccine does not in the best of circumstances prevent lung infection; pneumococcal infection is not synonymous with "pneumonia;"  the vaccine may have no "booster" but revaccination is a common practice; and not all smokers are alike, making it unlikely that the CDC would recommend the vaccination indiscriminately. After reading the article, the reader should be left wondering what the health benefit might be of this strategy, but fairly confident that more vaccine will be sold and administered. And readers of the shortened NY Daily News article  got even less. If 230 words is all you can invest in a story like this, you might as well give up the space to the comics section or Sudoku.

The original Associated Press story mentions the cost of of Pneumovax $30, and the original AP story also had questions about cost effectiveness of vaccinating younger, otherwise healthy college-age smokers. But both points were cut out in the version published by the NY Daily News. The story does not mention the number of adult smokers under age 65 who would need to be vaccinated to prevent one case of pneumonia. There was little data on this point in the source material, which the story should have noted. The original AP story mentions that the vaccine may not be very effective and may be considered overtreatment in otherwise healthy younger smokers. But the NY Daily News cut out that part in what it published. Neither version mentioned potential side effects of the vaccine, which might include pain if adminstered via the muscle, and allergic reaction, though this is rare. The story does not provide any quantitative evidence on which the new vaccination recommendations were based; however, there are no publicly-available data provided by the CDC or ACIP to report. The story fails to note this lack of evidence, or question experts on this point. The story does note that smokers are four times more likely to develop pneumonia than non-smokers of the same age. The story mentions mortality from pneumonia infections in adults over 65 and notes that death from pneumonia is younger people–even smokers– is relatively rare. The story could have done a better job with sources. In the original AP story there were two sources quoted, one of whom works for the CDC which issued the recommendations, and the other is independent. But the NY Daily News cut out the independent source interview. The story might have included a pulmonologist not on the recommending panel, or at a primary care physician, to give perspective on the current evidence and clinical implications of vaccinating 31 million adult smokers while providing smoking cessation counseling. The original AP story discussed the inefficacy of the vaccine in younger people and mentions that there is no booster available, even though protection drops off after 5-10 years. But the NY Daily News deleted that section. The story does not mention how smoking cessation counseling will be administered with vaccine. The story also mentions deaths from pneumonia in those over 65, but we are not told how pneumonia is typically treated in this population and in younger people, or in smokers in particular. We don’t know how many smokers need to be vaccinated to prevent one case of invasive infection; we don’t know how many cases will be prevented by adopting this new strategy. This uncertainty is not made clear in this article. The story explains that the vaccination is already in use for people over age 65. Recommended pneumonia vaccinations in older adults and those with compromised immune and respiratory systems is not new. The story focused on new recommendations that all adult smokers be vaccinated. There isn’t any evidence that the story relied solely or largely on a news release.


Promise of faster, more accessible schizophrenia diagnosis, Rutgers study shows

Explanation: This news release describes a 50-person study that tested whether a hand-held device that measures electrical activity in the retina can be used to diagnose schizophrenia. The study was published in the Journal of Abnormal Psychology. The news release addresses the availability of the device and doesn’t engage in disease-mongering. However, it doesn’t talk about costs or study limitations, and the lead offers false hope by stating that a device “common in optometrists’ offices may hold the key to faster diagnosis of schizophrenia.”   Schizophrenia is a chronic mental disorder that tends to emerge during teen and young adult years and can create disabling symptoms. Medications and talk therapy can help. However, treatment can be delayed because it’s difficult to diagnose. Symptoms can overlap with those of other conditions. Also, in teens, early signs such as flagging grades and irritability are common in adolescents.

There was no discussion of the cost of this device (or the cost of a test using the device). One news release put the cost at “less than $15,000.” The news release stated the results “show the device accurately indicated reduced electrical activity in the retina in multiple cell layers in the participants who had schizophrenia, including in cell types that had not been studied before in this disorder.” Presumably this meant that all of the patients with schizophrenia were identified, but there are no numbers. Also, the news release didn’t explain whether the device accurately ruled out schizophrenia in those who didn’t have it. The news release and scientific article both referred to group (averaged) data, which is distinct from individual diagnosis. What’s known about the safety of this device? And what about the chances of false positives or false negatives? The news release didn’t say. It only quoted a researcher stating the test was performed to be “as noninvasive and quick as possible.” There was no mention of limitations of this study, such as the small number of participants. It also wasn’t clear whether the study was blinded; presumably at least the study participants if not the researchers taking the measurements knew their status. A study to show the diagnostic usefulness of the device would require a much larger sample of mostly younger people, positive and negative predictive values, and involve patients with other conditions such as mood and drug abuse disorders. No disease mongering here. But the release doesn’t provide much context about the disease other than a quote from the lead researcher: “Schizophrenia is a devastating disorder, probably the most disabling disorder long term. Although we know quite a bit about it, it’s still not that well understood.” The prevalence of schizophrenia and related psychotic disorders in the U.S. is estimated at 0.25 percent to 0.64 percent of the US population. The news release did not mention who funded this study, and it which wasn’t mentioned in the study itself, as far as we could tell. The release also didn’t mention that one of the authors is employed by LKC Technologies, which makes these devices. There was no discussion of how schizophrenia is diagnosed currently, which involves a checklist of symptoms such as delusions, incoherent speech, hallucinations, hearing voices, cognitive problems, or a flattening of emotions that hang on for months. How accurate is that method, and how much does it cost? The release said the device is “common in optometrists’ offices.” The news release said was this is the first time a portable device was used for these tests. The news release also notes that, “Looking at biomarkers in the eye as a way to understand psychiatric disorder is a new field of study,” but the journal article cites studies as far back as 1999. So not so new. The lead sentence oversold this study, indicating that it showed how a common device “may hold the key to faster diagnosis of schizophrenia, predicting relapse and symptom severity and assessing treatment effectiveness.” The news release headline also over-reaches. A better headline might have been the sub-title: “Researchers explore eye function in schizophrenia as a window into the brain.” But further down the news release quoted a researcher stating that the study “should help generate further research” into developing a test clinicians can use to diagnose, treat and monitor people with schizophrenia. And at the end a quote — from lead author Docia Demmin — tempered the assertion by stating “it’s too soon to call this a diagnostic tool.”


Discussion forums and social media have been abuzz with reports that Chic-fil-A offers a free meal for new moms.

Explanation: Chic-fil-A Offers Free Meal for New Mothers

It’s true that some Chic-fil-A locations offer a free meal for new moms — but it’s not a companywide promotion. Rumors about a free lunch for new moms at Chic-fil-A date back years. Pregnancy discussion boards are filled with threads about how if new moms-to-be register at a local restaurant and provide their home address, that Chic-fil-A will deliver a free meal to them:  Then, in April 2016, a post about the new mom promotion at Chic-fil-A went viral on Facebook: Attention expecting moms. If u contact ur closest chic fil a close to ur due date or right after u have the baby they offer a new mom meal for FREE. It’s a small platter, 4 large fries or fruit, a gallon of lemonade or tea, and cookies. Pretty cool!!!! So ladies, contact them when its time for this awesome deal. Tag expecting mothers u know. In-store promotions at Chic-fil-A like this one have caused confusion in the past. Last year, it was widely reported that all Chic-fil-A restaurants had a “missing man table” set to honor combat veterans who have gone missing in action. We found that a number of restaurants in the Atlanta market had elected to do that, but that it wasn’t a companywide policy. Click here for that story. The same is true for the free meal for new mothers claim. There’s no definitive list of Chic-fil-A locations that offer free meals for new mom. Thanks to a Houston-based mom blog, however, we can confirm that some restaurants in the area were offering the promotion as of the beginning of January 2015: Many Chick-fil-A locations deliver a New Mommy Meal when you are home from the hospital with your newborn. It’s a small nugget tray, fruit tray, a gallon of sweet tea and a gift for baby. You can sign up in their restaurant, or call your local Chick-fil-A to see if they participate in this program. And the free meal for new moms has also undoubtedly been confused with Chic-fil-A’s “Mom Valet” or “Mommy VIP Service” that some locations rolled out in early 2016. The service enables parents to place an order at the drive-thru window, and then an employee will make up a table inside for the family so they don’t have to stand in line. Again, the only sure way to know exactly what promotions and services your local Chic-fil-A locations offer to mothers is to check with individual restaurant operators. Comments


In Iran in 1979, the extremists hijacked the broad-based popular revolution against the Shah and established a brutal theocracy.

National, History, Foreign Policy, Hillary Clinton,

Befitting her previous position as secretary of state, Hillary Clinton’s new book, Hard Choices, ranges across the globe, occasionally looking back into history long before she took the helm at the State Department. For instance, Clinton writes that "in Iran in 1979, the extremists hijacked the broad-based popular revolution against the Shah and established a brutal theocracy." We had always closely associated the Iranian Revolution with Islamic fundamentalism. Was Clinton’s summary correct? We checked in with several scholars who have studied the region, and their consensus was that Clinton was broadly correct, despite a bit of oversimplification. First, some background. The revolution began in the late 1970s, amid simmering discontent among Iranians about Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the autocratic leader who operated a feared secret police. Even as he maintained generally (but not uninterrupted) good ties to the West, his standing at home was deteriorating. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, an exiled cleric living in Paris, courted support among critics of the Shah. After a series of strikes and protests, the Shah in January 1979 left for an "extended vacation," never to return home. The handpicked leaders the Shah left behind tried to prevent Khomeini from forming a government, but after the cleric returned to Tehran in February 1979, unrest grew. In mid February, supporters of Khomeini declared a revolutionary state, and within two months, Khomeini won a national referendum. "The strongest images of Iran's revolution come from those early years" of 1979 to 1982, wrote Robin Wright in her 2000 book, The Last Great Revolution: Turmoil and Transformation in Iran. "Many still linger in the minds of outsiders: The demonstrations by rifle-toting mullahs and chador-clad women. The morgue slabs with bullet-riddled bodies of officials from the monarchy and other loyalists who were summarily executed in the course of revolutionary justice. The seizure of the United States Embassy and 52 hostages who, over the next 444 days, were often paraded with crude blindfolds in front of cameras as effigies of Uncle Sam were burned in the background by angry youths. This was the delirium." Largely lost in this popular image is the fact that the revolution’s supporters were not exclusively Islamist -- perhaps not even primarily Islamist. The Shah’s regime had made enemies of leftists, nationalists, intellectuals, democrats and the moderately religious. All of these groups, to one degree or another, were supporters of revolution against the Shah. Clinton "is absolutely correct that the revolution of 1979 was a broad-based revolution against the Shah," said Mohsen M. Milani, executive director of the University of South Florida’s World Center for Strategic and Diplomatic Studies. "In fact, it was one of the most popular revolutions of the modern era." Gary Sick, an adjunct professor at the Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs and author of All Fall Down: America's Tragic Encounter With Iran and October Surprise: America's Hostages in Iran and the Election of Ronald Reagan, agreed. "The fact is that most of the millions of Iranians who took to the streets to oppose the Shah did not think they were going to replace him with a theocratic state," Sick said. "That was the work of Khomeini and his followers, and it was actively opposed by many of the secular -- and even clerical -- revolutionaries." Some of the historians we checked with took mild issue with the phrase "hijacked," since Khomeini -- who for many Americans personifies Islamic extremism -- was always the central player in the revolution. After all, it’s hard to hijack a revolution you’d always led. But there’s an explanation for this paradox: Initially, Khomeini had openly stated that he was not pursuing a theocracy. "Iran's emergence as a modern theocracy was never written in the heavens," Wright wrote in her book. "Quite the contrary. In earlier pronouncements about a just government Ayatollah Khomeini actually said he didn't advocate clerical rule. … In one of his last interviews before leaving Paris, Ayatollah Khomeini told Le Monde, ‘Our intention is not that religious leaders themselves should administer the state.’ "Once the tumultuous fanfare of his return died down, the Imam seemed almost uninterested in day-to-day government affairs. The ayatollah, already in his late seventies, instead went back to the dusty theological center of Qom. He seemed content to leave politics to the first revolutionary government of secular technocrats. His role was limited to settling disputes." That changed with the effort to write Iran’s Constitution in the fall of 1979. "Fearful that other changes might further marginalize or even exclude them, Ayatollah Khomeini's followers introduced a process to vet candidates' credentials -- a precedent that time and again allowed them to manipulate future elections, too," Wright wrote. "It worked. They won a majority. And the final draft (of the constitution) ended up thoroughly Islamic." Even then, the Islamic revolution wasn’t complete, Wright wrote: "For the first presidential election in January 1980, a full year after the revolution, Ayatollah Khomeini decreed that no clerics could run for president -- further proof that he still didn't intend to establish a total theocracy. Over the next 18 months, however, Iran was wracked by bloodshed as the ruling clergy and their adjutants gradually eliminated former partners -- leftists, nationalists and intellectuals--from any claim to power." Iran became fully Islamist in October 1981, when the cleric Ali Khamanei won the third presidential election -- the first election in which clerics were allowed to run. "As of October 1981," Wright wrote, "the mullahs were no longer only the supervisors and shadows of the state. They now dominated all its branches." The experts we talked to quibbled slightly with Clinton’s claim, saying it’s a bit oversimplified. Notably, Clinton inaccurately compresses the time frame. The changes she’s talking about didn’t just happen immediately in 1979 but rather played out in an evolutionary fashion for two years after the Shah fell. "If you have to do the whole history in 19 words, it's probably okay," said John Limbert, historian and political scientist at the U.S. Naval Academy and author of Iran: At War with History. Stephen Kinzer, a Boston University professor and author of the book, Reset: Iran, Turkey, and America’s Future, said Clinton is generally correct that "the Iranian revolution was broad-based, and one faction later seized control, establishing a brutal theocracy." Our ruling Clinton said that "in Iran in 1979, the extremists hijacked the broad-based popular revolution against the Shah and established a brutal theocracy." She’s generally correct, experts say, despite questions over whether "hijacked" is the right word and whether she used an overly broad time frame.


Folic acid tied to better grades in Swedish teens

Explanation: This is a story about a recent study published in the journal Pediatrics which found an association between folic acid levels and school grades in a cohort of Swedish teens. This story did a reasonable job of describing this cohort study. It explained that the small study may not be meaningful in the US where many common foods are fortified with folic acid – making it unlikely that there are children with low or marginal intakes of this B vitamin. Understanding how to interpret study results and knowing the appropriate questions to ask in order to understand how those results might be applicable is a valuable skill. Helping people think about studies of nutrition in context and whether they might apply to other populations is important. This story demonstrated those skills.

Not applicable. Costs weren’t mentioned, but we didn’t think that was a necessity in this case. The story provided the data on the summation of grades showing the difference in folic acid levels in the children in the highest and lowest groups. While it is nice to have absolute grade difference provided, it would have been useful to indicate whether these differences were statistically significant or whether the differences in folic acid intake were clinically significant. Not applicable. Harms not mentioned. The story could have mentioned the potential for excessive folic acid intake to interfere with vitamin B12 uptake which, though unlikely in a teen population, could mask symptoms of B12 deficiency. But we’ll give it the benefit of the doubt on this. The story mentioned the fact that the study was small and that the population differed in an important way from teens in the US who consume food that is supplemented with folic acid. It also pointed out that the study was not a randomized controlled trial so there may have been other differences between the groups of teens found to have high and low amounts of folic acid. The story did not engage in overt disease mongering. The story included quotes from independent sources who helped provide context and perspective on the study and its results. The story mentioned that the food supply in the US was folic acid fortified. The story stated that folic acid is one of the ‘B’ vitamins and that at least in the US, is found in fortified foods. The story could have also mentioned that folic acid is a common ingredient in multivitamin formulations. The story provided good background on folic acid intake. This story did not appear to rely solely on a news release.


“Four kids who took the coronavirus vaccine died immediately.”

Explanation: There is no evidence that children have died because of a COVID-19 vaccine. No vaccine currently in development has been approved for widespread public use. There is no evidence the vaccines in development will contain microchips.

Public Health, Facebook Fact-checks, Coronavirus, Viral image,

There’s still no proven, publicly available vaccine for the coronavirus, but misinformation about it is already coursing through the internet. One recent Facebook post shares an image containing inflammatory claims about a coronavirus vaccine that might one day be available to the public. "The covid-19 vaccine will be mandatory in order to go back too school. They will contain RFID Chips," the image in the post reads. It continues: "Many kids will die from the covid-19 vaccine. Just to remind you the 4 kids that took the vaccine, died immediately." The post was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat  news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.) The claims in the post are speculative and misleading in a number of ways, and have been debunked by another fact-checking organization. COVID-19 has killed more than half a million people worldwide, including nearly 130,000 in the U.S. Companies around the world are scrambling to develop a vaccine, and many potential vaccines are undergoing safety trials in humans. Health officials are struggling to reassure some skeptics that a vaccine can be developed quickly without compromising safety. As of June 30, only one coronavirus vaccine had been approved for limited use. The Chinese government has approved it only for military personnel. Currently there is no coronavirus vaccine that has been approved for the American public. And there is no evidence that children have died because they received one of the COVID-19 vaccines being developed. In April, PolitiFact investigated a claim that seven children in Senegal died after receiving COVID-19 vaccines and discovered the Facebook post’s claim was . In May, Reuters also reported that social media posts were incorrect in claiming that a TV news report from 2019 showed the deadly results of a COVID-19 vaccination trial in Guinea. PolitiFact found no evidence that anyone has died from complications related to a trial COVID-19 vaccination. PolitiFact has also debunked several  claims involving the coronavirus vaccine and microchips. The U.S. isn’t developing an "antivirus" for COVID-19 that will include an RFID chip, for example. There’s also no evidence that Democrats are pushing for mandatory vaccinations or microchip implants to fight the coronavirus. And there is no evidence yet of any requirement that students be vaccinated against COVID-19 before returning to school, though some states could require it if a vaccine becomes available. State laws govern immunization requirements for schoolchildren, including those in private schools and daycare centers, but all states allow exemptions for medical reasons, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and some allow exemptions for religious or philosophical reasons. A viral image on Facebook claimed, "Many kids will die from the covid-19 vaccine. Just to remind you the 4 kids that took the vaccine, died immediately." There is no evidence that children have died because of the coronavirus vaccines in development, or that a future vaccine will contain microchips.


In the House Republican health care bill, "we’re expanding women’s access to health services by redirecting Planned Parenthood dollars to community health centers, which vastly outnumber Planned Parenthood clinics.

Abortion, Georgia, Corrections and Updates, Health Care, Women, Barry Loudermilk,

Moments after the House passed a bill to significantly overhaul the nation’s health care system, Rep. Barry Loudermilk, R-Ga., blasted an email to constituents. While the bill "doesn’t fix the entire problem," he said, it "begins the process of fixing our broken health care system." A PolitiFact reader sent us a copy of Loudermilk’s email and asked us to fact-check it. We zeroed in on one of the exchanges in a "frequently asked questions" section that sought to explain some of the bill’s provisions: "Why are you cutting women’s health services?" "We’re not. In fact, we’re expanding women’s access to health services by redirecting Planned Parenthood dollars to community health centers, which vastly outnumber Planned Parenthood clinics." Could pushing Planned Parenthood out of the picture really expand women’s access to health care? We found that there are indeed more community health centers than Planned Parenthood clinics -- but that doesn’t mean that redirecting dollars to them will amount to "expanding women’s access to health services." Some background The GOP health care bill bill would effectively block Planned Parenthood for a year from securing reimbursements from Medicaid -- not just for abortions, which is already the case, but for any services, from pap smears to birth control. Planned Parenthood says abortion services are already walled off from payments they get for services that have nothing to do with abortion. But abortion opponents have long argued that the government is tacitly supporting abortion even by reimbursing Planned Parenthood for non-abortion services, saying such money is fungible once it reaches Planned Parenthood’s coffers. The bill’s change could have a significant impact on Planned Parenthood: About 43 percent of the group’s budget comes from the government, including grants and reimbursements, much of which comes from Medicaid. The group says the bill, if enacted, could lead to closures of clinics and leave women without access to vital services, especially in medically underserved areas. Do community health centers "vastly outnumber" Planned Parenthood clinics? Loudermilk has a point on the numbers of clinics. We looked at a census of clinics that provide contraceptive services published in April 2017 by the Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive health nonprofit. The group tallied up various types of clinics, the most numerous of which are "federally qualified health centers" -- defined by the federal government as "safety-net providers that primarily provide services typically furnished in an outpatient clinic." Such facilities can include community health centers, migrant health centers, homeless health care centers, and public housing primary care centers. For 2015, the census tallied 5,829 federally qualified health centers nationally, compared to 676 Planned Parenthood clinics. That’s a ratio of greater than 8-to-1, so the adjective "vastly" seems appropriate. Would the bill redirect money from Planned Parenthood to community health centers? Not necessarily. Planned Parenthood received about $553.7 million from the government in 2015 for its services; the group, however, does not make public what portion of that is specifically from the federal government because the funding streams from different levels of government are sometimes hard to disentangle. The best estimate we can get comes from the Congressional Budget Office, which projected that the provision blocking federal funding to Planned Parenthood would result in $178 million in reduced federal outlays. If the CBO’s projection is accurate, then the increase in federal funding to community health centers in the bill -- $422 million -- would represent a larger federal investment than the money being held back from Planned Parenthood. At first glance, that would seem to make the bill a net expansion in dollars, if you consider only these two line items. However, a couple issues balance against the notion that that this will represent an expansion of care. First, there is no guarantee that the $422 million spent would go towards the same patients, and for the same services, that would be lost due to the Planned Parenthood cuts. The bill does not explicitly require that. Another caveat comes from a different conclusion in the same CBO analysis. "To the extent that there would be reductions in access to care under the legislation, they would affect services that help women avert pregnancies," CBO wrote. "The people most likely to experience reduced access to care would probably reside in areas without other health care clinics or medical practitioners who serve low-income populations. CBO projects that about 15 percent of those people would lose access to care." The immediate loss of care for 15 percent of Planned Parenthood patients also undercuts the argument that money would simply flow from one type of clinic to the other. Would redirecting funding to these centers expand women’s access to health services? There’s reason to be skeptical. For starters, common sense suggests that even if community health centers ended up being able to serve every single patient currently served by Planned Parenthood, that wouldn’t qualify as "expanding women’s access to health services" -- it would simply be maintaining it. The closure of as many as 676 Planned Parenthood facilities would require an awful lot of expansion of resources elsewhere just to keep pace, before any "expansion" of access begins. And there’s reason to believe that community health centers may not be able to pick up the slack if Planned Parenthood centers disappear. First, there’s a capacity problem. Planned Parenthood centers tend to be unusually efficient in providing health services to women, because that’s their specialty. The average Planned Parenthood clinic served 2,950 patients for contraceptive services in 2015, compared to 320 for the average federally qualified health center, according to the Guttmacher census. "Because by definition health centers are in medically underserved communities with elevated risk and insufficient primary care, the last thing one does is get rid of any supply," Sara Rosenbaum, a professor of health law and policy at the Milken Institute School of Public Health at George Washington University, told PolitiFact. "This is the corker. Health centers are overwhelmed with need." And currently, community health centers are already operating with a shortage of staff, making any rapid expansion that much trickier. "Workforce challenges are one of the primary barriers to health center patient growth," the National Association of Community Health Centers concluded in a 2016 report on its sector. "If all health center clinical vacancies were filled today, health centers could serve 2 million more patients." And second, community health centers and Planned Parenthood clinics aren’t interchangeable, experts say. Guttmacher data indicates that Planned Parenthood centers "are considerably more likely to offer a broad range of contraceptive methods than sites operated by other types of agencies. Nearly all Planned Parenthood health centers offer the full range of Food and Drug Administration-approved reversible contraceptive methods," compared to half of federally qualified health centers. Rebecca Kreitzer, an assistant professor of public policy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, recently told the Atlantic that oral contraceptives and condoms are cheap enough that community health clinics can afford to give them out and then request federal reimbursement, but IUDs and contraceptive implants -- two long-term but reversible methods -- are often too expensive for clinics to front without immediate payment. By contrast, Planned Parenthood is a big enough network that it can afford to provide more expensive methods immediately. Because of this, Planned Parenthood clinics are also likelier to have staff on hand with the requisite expertise. "Just because there is a federally qualified health center near where there is a Planned Parenthood Clinic does not mean we can assume the women going to Planned Parenthood would easily be served," said Keith J. Mueller, head of the Department of Health Management and Policy at the University of Iowa. When the Atlantic investigated how prepared Iowa health clinics were to pick up patients from Planned Parenthood, they found that lists of clinics provided by Republican lawmakers included "a dentist’s office, a school nurse, and a youth shelter" as well as one clinic that had closed and several that didn’t provide family-planning services. "They're assuming we're the alternative," Ted Boesen, CEO of the non-profit Iowa Primary Care Association, told the magazine. "But we're waiting to see what kind of a scale it is." Finally, the Energy and Commerce Committee said it’s possible to argue "that Planned Parenthood provides inferior overall service because they cannot offer holistic care to their patients, as they are a boutique reproductive health provider." But experts say the committee’s emphasis on full-spectrum health care is more expensive than reproductive health care "Because health centers must think about the full spectrum of primary health care for all patients, the absence of a specialized safety-net provider such as Planned Parenthood would be deeply problematic," Rosenbaum has written. "When health centers attempt to respond to a surge in demand, they must think about not just the specialized services lost, but all of the health needs of the patients who find their way to a health center, not to mention those of their families. … As a result, the anticipated cost per patient served is far higher than family planning and related services alone." In other words, the higher cost of providing care at community health centers is another reason why the increased federal funding figure in the bill may not be sufficient for replacing the lost Planned Parenthood services. Our ruling Loudermilk said that in the House Republican health care bill, "we’re expanding women’s access to health services by redirecting Planned Parenthood dollars to community health centers, which vastly outnumber Planned Parenthood clinics." Purely on the numbers, he has a point that there are more federally qualified health centers than Planned Parenthood clinics. But the notion that bypassing Planned Parenthood would mean "expanding" access is dubious. Challenges of geography, capacity, specialization and cost raise significant questions about whether existing centers, even if they were provided with Planned Parenthood’s federal revenue stream, would be able to maintain the current patient load, much less expand it. UPDATE, May 11, 2017: This report has been updated to include material provided by the House Energy and Commerce Committee that we received a day after the article was published. Our rating remains the same.


Older emphysema drug linked to heart deaths.

Explanation: A drug once commonly used for  emphysema and other forms of chronic obstructive pulmonary  disease may raise the risk of heart death by a third, U.S.  researchers reported on Tuesday.

The drug, called ipratropium, is made by Boehringer  Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals Inc under the brand names Atrovent  and Combivent. It has largely been replaced by Pfizer Inc’s  Spiriva. It prevents bronchospasms, attacks in which the  airways narrow, making breathing difficult. “This medication may be having some systemic cardiovascular  effect that is increasing the risk of death in COPD patients,”  said Todd Lee of Northwestern University in Chicago, who led  the study. Lee’s team found that military veterans with recently  diagnosed COPD who used Atrovent or Combivent were 34 percent  more likely to die of a heart attack or arrhythmia than COPD  patients using only a similar product called albuterol, or  those who did not take any drugs. Writing in the Annals of Internal Medicine, the researchers  said they looked at the cause of death of 145,000 veterans with  newly diagnosed COPD from 1999 to 2003. Lee said doctors and patients should be aware of the  potential risk. COPD is an umbrella term for respiratory diseases including  emphysema and chronic bronchitis and is mostly caused by  smoking. An estimated 12 million people in the United States  have COPD, the fourth-leading cause of death. “The safety of drugs for COPD patients has flown under the  radar,” Lee said. In March the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said another  COPD drug called Spiriva, marketed by Pfizer Inc and Boehringer  Ingelheim, may increase the risk of stroke.


Statistics demonstrate that crime rates in Australia have increased substantially since the government there instituted a gun buy-back program in 1997.

Explanation: Do statistics demonstrate that crime rates in Australia have increased substantially since the government instituted a gun buy-back program in 1997?

During the 1990s, Australia was confronting a problem similar to the one that regularly confronts Americans: shooting incidents over the previous decade had left more than a hundred people dead, including the infamous Port Arthur massacre in April 1996 that saw one gunman wielding a semi-automatic rifle kill 35 people over the course of a single day (including 20 people with 29 bullets in about 90 seconds): In 1996, Martin Bryant entered a café at the site of a historic penal colony at Port Arthur, Tasmania. The 28-year-old ate lunch before pulling a semi-automatic rifle from his bag and embarking on a killing spree. By the time he was apprehended the next morning, 35 people were dead and 23 had been wounded. Bryant had become the worst mass-murderer in Australia’s history. Australia had experienced mass shootings before, but the Port Arthur massacre shook the nation to its core. Bryant was later assessed to have the IQ of an 11-year-old. He told investigators that he’d paid cash for firearms at a local gun dealer. Shortly afterwards, John Howard, the new Australian prime minister, moved to enact nationwide gun law reform (a process complicated by the fact that the Australian national government had no control over gun ownership or use, so gun reform legislation had to be passed individually by all states and territories). Those reform efforts, known as the 1996 National Firearms Agreement (NFA), included two nationwide gun buybacks, voluntary surrenders, state gun amnesties, a ban on the importation of new automatic and semiautomatic weapons, the tightening of gun owner licensing, and the creation of uniform national standards for gun registration. Australia collected and destroyed an estimated 650,000 firearms (a reduction equivalent to the removal of about forty million guns from the United States), which reduced Australia’s firearms stock by around one-fifth. Around 2001, a piece appeared on the Internet that has been circulated widely and often ever since, attempting to make the case that Australia’s gun reform efforts were a dismal failure in terms of reducing violent crime: From: Ed Chenel, a police officer in Australia. Hi Yanks, I thought you all would like to see the real figures from Down Under. It has now been 12 months since gun owners in Australia were forced by a new law to surrender 640,381 personal firearms to be destroyed by our own government, a program costing Australia taxpayers more than $500 million dollars. The first year results are now in: Australia-wide, homicides are up 3.2 percent, Australia-wide, assaults are up 8.6 percent; Australia-wide, armed robberies are up 44 percent (yes, 44 percent!). In the state of Victoria alone, homicides with firearms are now up 300 percent. (Note that while the law-abiding citizens turned them in, the criminals did not and criminals still possess their guns!) While figures over the previous 25 years showed a steady decrease in armed robbery with firearms, this has changed drastically upward in the past 12 months, since the criminals now are guaranteed that their prey is unarmed. There has also been a dramatic increase in break-ins and assaults of the elderly. Australian politicians are at a loss to explain how public safety has decreased, after such monumental effort and expense was expended in “successfully ridding Australian society of guns.” You won’t see this data on the American evening news or hear your governor or members of the state Assembly disseminating this information. The Australian experience proves it. Guns in the hands of honest citizens save lives and property and, yes, gun-control laws affect only the law-abiding citizens. Take note Americans, before it’s too late! The conclusions drawn in this piece were both premature and inaccurate, however. In a peer-reviewed paper published by American Law and Economics Review in 2012, researchers Andrew Leigh of Australian National University and Christine Neill of Wilfrid Laurier University found that in the decade following the NFA, firearm homicides (both suicides and intentional killings) in Australia had dropped significantly: In 1997, Australia implemented a gun buyback program that reduced the stock of firearms by around one-fifth (and nearly halved the number of gun-owning households). Using differences across states, we test[ed] whether the reduction in firearms availability affected homicide and suicide rates. We find that the buyback led to a drop in the firearm suicide rates of almost 80%, with no significant effect on non-firearm death rates. The effect on firearm homicides is of similar magnitude but is less precise [somewhere between 35% and 50%]. Similarly, Dr. David Hemenway and Mary Vriniotis of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center found in 2011 that the NFA had been “incredibly successful in terms of lives saved”: For Australia, the NFA seems to have been incredibly successful in terms of lives saved. While 13 gun massacres (the killing of 4 or more people at one time) occurred in Australia in the 18 years before the NFA, resulting in more than one hundred deaths, in the 14 following years (and up to the present), there were no gun massacres. The NFA also seems to have reduced firearm homicide outside of mass shootings, as well as firearm suicide. In the seven years before the NFA (1989-1995), the average annual firearm suicide death rate per 100,000 was 2.6 (with a yearly range of 2.2 to 2.9); in the seven years after the buyback was fully implemented (1998-2004), the average annual firearm suicide rate was 1.1 (yearly range 0.8 to 1.4). In the seven years before the NFA, the average annual firearm homicide rate per 100,000 was .43 (range .27 to .60) while for the seven years post NFA, the average annual firearm homicide rate was .25 (range .16 to .33) Additional evidence strongly suggests that the buyback causally reduced firearm deaths. First, the drop in firearm deaths was largest among the type of firearms most affected by the buyback. Second, firearm deaths in states with higher buyback rates per capita fell proportionately more than in states with lower buyback rates. While there is no doubt that firearms deaths in Australia have decreased substantially in the years since the implementation of the NFA, how much of that decrease is directly attributable to the NFA is still subject to debate. Much of that debate focuses on the fact that the gun death rate in Australia was already decreasing prior to the time the NFA was introduced: For Australia, a difficulty with determining the effect of the law was that gun deaths were falling in the early 1990s. No study has explained why gun deaths were falling, or why they might be expected to continue to fall. Yet most studies generally assumed that they would have continued to drop without the NFA. Many studies still found strong evidence for a beneficial effect of the law. It’s also true that in both cases, the authors of studies cautioned that NFA-like plans wouldn’t necessarily achieve (and have not achieved) the same results in the United States, in large part because Australia’s geography makes it much easier to control the flow of arms into the country: Several factors are important in assessing the extent to which the results from the Australian buyback can be extrapolated to other countries. Australian borders are more easily controlled than in countries that have land borders. In addition, Australia’s government in general and its policing and customs services in particular are highly organized and effective. The NFA also had an extremely high degree of political support and was quite competently executed. And the buyback was accompanied by a uniform national system for licensing and registration of firearms. These factors should be borne in mind in considering the extent to which the results from the Australian NFA might generalize to other countries. It does not appear that the Australian experience with gun buybacks is fully replicable in the United States. Levitt provides three reasons why gun buybacks in the United States have apparently been ineffective: (a) the buybacks are relatively small in scale (b) guns are surrendered voluntarily, and so are not like the ones used in crime; and (c) replacement guns are easy to obtain. These factors did not apply to the Australian buyback, which was large, compulsory, and the guns on this island nation could not easily be replaced. For example, compared to the buyback of 650,000 firearms, annual imports after the law averaged only 30,000 per year, with many of these bought by law enforcement agencies. Regardless of how much of a cause-and-effect relationship there might be between the NFA and gun deaths in Australia, it’s undeniable that the firearms homicide rate in that country has decreased substantially since the implementation of the NFA. It’s not the case, however, as suggested by the misleading and long out-of-date online piece quoted in the Example block above (which was written way back in 2001) that the overall crime rate in Australia has shot up since the NFA was introduced. The rates of various types of violent crimes (sexual assault, kidnapping, homicides of all types) have scarcely changed at all, and while the robbery rate rose substantially in the 1998-2001 timeframe, it dropped below its pre-NFA level by 2004 and has continually declined since then:


The best evidence is that you lose -- if you use marijuana as a teenager regularly -- eight IQ points.

About two dozen states have moved to loosen the reins on marijuana. The legal ground is shifting and a New York Times Sunday editorial tried to shake things up a bit further. For more than 40 years, federal law has banned pot and lawmakers in many states have voiced reluctance to run afoul of Washington. The paper’s editorial board said the federal government should be silent on marijuana and let states decide for themselves. Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus said she was okay with letting states experiment, but in a discussion on NBC’s Meet the Press on July 27, 2014, Marcus said she was against letting states "go the full legalization route." Her main concern with state’s loosening the rules had to do with teenagers. "It is a vast social experiment," Marcus said. "We do not know the outcome except that the best evidence is that you lose -- if you use marijuana as a teenager regularly -- eight IQ points." We didn’t hear from Marcus, but we’re pretty sure she is citing a 2012 study from Duke University researchers published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The Duke team led by Madeline Meier studied nearly every child born in the New Zealand town of Dunedin born in the early 1970s. By the time they turned 13, these children had taken their first IQ tests. Follow-up interviews as they grew older determined if they were using marijuana, alcohol or other drugs. They took another battery of IQ tests when they turned 38. The Duke researchers screened out those who had problems with hard drugs, alcohol or schizophrenia. They controlled for the kids who dropped out of school. What they found was the ones who began smoking pot weekly before they turned 18 showed an average drop of about eight IQ points. Some lost more and some lost less but all lost at least a bit. "Impairment was concentrated among adolescent-onset cannabis users, with more persistent use associated with greater decline," the researchers wrote. The study didn’t say this proved that that early and long-term use caused the drop in IQ results. Researchers acknowledged that some unknown variable might be responsible. At the same time, they said it was plausible that pot could be disrupting brain development in teenagers. The report attracted a fair bit of attention. Then, about a year later, another analysis emerged, again published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. This one came from Ole Rogeberg, a Norwegian economist, who said he could get the same results as Meier by factoring in socioeconomic status. In short, Rogeberg said the kids from poorer households would lose ground on IQ tests over time because they tended to end up doing work that was less mentally demanding. "The causal effects estimated in Meier et al. are likely to be overestimates and the true effect could be zero," Rogeberg wrote. "Although it would be too strong to say that the results have been discredited, the methodology is flawed and the causal inference drawn from the results premature." Meier shot back that Rogeberg had relied on an economic model and that when her team looked at the incomes of the families, they still found a loss in intelligence that was tied to marijuana. In particular, children from middle-class households were more likely to see a drop in their IQ scores if they started smoking pot early and continued as they aged. However, there was no mention of how large the drop was or how statistically robust it was. Annette Dobson, a statistician at the University of Queensland, commented on the debate. Dobson largely weighed in on Rogeberg’s side, saying the number of long-term pot users in the Dunedin group was small, only 124 reported regular use at any time. "I suspect that the small sample size limited the extent to which the authors were able to take possible confounding factors, such as socioeconomic status, into account," Dobson wrote. "So are the original results by Meier et al. correct? I don’t believe we can say whether they are or not." Our ruling Marcus said the best evidence shows that teenagers who start smoking marijuana will lose eight IQ points. This overstates the actual underlying report. It would be more accurate to say the study showed a higher risk of losing that many points on an IQ test, not that a person necessarily would. More fundamentally, an equally reputable analysis found that IQ loss could be tied to household incomes as much as marijuana use. Clearly, a scientific consensus has yet to emerge, and Marcus ignored the ongoing debate.


Health officials in Omaha confirm 2 pediatric flu deaths.

Explanation: Health officials in Omaha confirmed Friday that two children have died of complications from influenza this flu season.

The Douglas County HEalth Department said in a news release that both deaths were in people under 18. The department says it’s prohibited by privacy laws from identifying the two children who died and would not give their exact ages or where they lived in Douglas County. The pediatric deaths follow the department’s report earlier this week that two adult flu-related adult deaths in people over 65 years have been reported in Douglas County. Health officials say the very young, the elderly and those with compromised immune systems are at greater risk of complications from the respiratory illness. The most recent report from the department on Monday says Douglas County has had 3,758 lab-confirmed flu cases this flu season. The flu season runs through April, so the department urged those who’ve not gotten a flu vaccine to get one.


We reduced abortion. We increased adoptions by 135 percent.

Explanation: Creative math by an abortion-rights mayor

At the  Des Moines Register  debate on Dec. 12, 2007, Rudy Giuliani acknolwedged a touchy point for his campaign: He supports abortion rights. But he emphasized that he dislikes abortion and repeated a claim he's made before, that while he was mayor of New York City, the number of abortions declined while adoptions rose. "We reduced abortion. We increased adoptions by 135 percent," he said. We've addressed his previous claims with  this ruling  and our article  "Giuliani's 'culture of life,' defined"  , but he used different wording and a different number this time, so we'll examine the new statement. He's right that abortions went down. They declined 16.8 percent during Giuliani's eight-year tenure, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. However, his wording suggests he took an active, leading role in reducing abortions. That doesn't square with his record. When we examined his tenure for our previous article, we spoke with key players familiar with his record, and they remembered a decidely abortion-rights mayor who went so far as to sign a proclamation for "Roe vs. Wade Anniversary Day." He also filled out a questionnaire for an abortion-rights group pledging his support for the cause. So for him to say "we reduced abortion" seems like a stretch. Two months ago, the Giuliani campaign maintained there was a link between the rise in adoptions and the decline in abortions. They now say he is not linking the two. But we believe many voters could be left with the impression that the two are related. And indeed, we couldn't find any research that showed an increase in adoptions led to a decrease in abortions. There's no question that adoptions rose during his term. But to reach 135 percent requires some serious calculator gymnastics. Two years into his first term, Giuliani created the Administration for Children's Services with a mission to improve the lives of the city's children. The agency aims to help kids in foster care, and it measures its success in large part by how many adoptions it facilitates each year. We focus on page 14 of the ACS 2003 Year End Review, which shows a bar chart of adoptions conducted through the city's child welfare system from 1989 to 2003. Giuliani was mayor from Jan. 1, 1994, to Dec. 31, 2001. His new agency came on line in January 1996. The chart shows a gradual increase in adoptions from 1989 through 1994, then a steeper increase through 1997 — the middle years of Giuliani's tenure. After that year, the numbers decline through 2002. Giuliani has previously said the rate of adoptions went up 65 to 70 percent. His campaign calculated that number by taking adoption rates for the six years before ACS was created and comparing them to the six years after. But now, Giuliani is citing a number twice as large: 135 percent. To get that number, his staff compared adoptions in all eight of his fiscal years against all eight of his predecessors'. This works out to a whopping 133 percent increase in adoptions, which Giuliani rounded up to 135. That's one way to look at it. But a more traditional way, simply comparing adoption rates in the first year of his tenure and in the last year, shows the rate increased by only 17 percent, a point first made by our friends at FactCheck.org. The Giuliani campaign said averaging the rates over two six-year (or now, eight-year) blocks helps smooth out peaks and valleys in individual years caused by social, economic and other forces. The first two years after ACS came on line, there was a spike in adoptions that Giuliani's campaign said was because of a backlog of foster kids waiting to connect with families. It's true, the campaign aides say, the numbers go down significantly in Giuliani's final two years. But they're still higher than those of his predecessor, David Dinkins. We find that's an unorthodox way of comparing the numbers and it relies on a different methodology than the abortion rate. For the abortion statistic, the Giuliani campaign looked at two points in time (the beginning and end of his tenure) and compared the two. Doing that for adoptions yields an increase of 17 percent. But here, they're trying some creative math to boost the number to 133. So, we find that while he's got his numbers right on abortion rates, it's a stretch for the abortion-rights mayor to take credit. We also find he has inflated the adoption figures by getting fancy with his math. It's worth saying again that to arrive at the "135 percent" increase in adoption rates the Giuliani campaign had to change the way it had been calculating those rates just a few months ago. We find his overall claim Barely True.


Five-minute neck scan can spot dementia 10 years earlier, say scientists

Explanation: The story focuses on research presented a conference that found increased intensity of “forward compression waves” (FCWs) in the carotid artery was associated with an increased risk of dementia later in life. The story didn’t tell readers this was an observational study–cause-and-effect couldn’t be established. Also, there is no discussion of the risks of this kind of screening test, notably the risk of false positives and false negatives. The study does not, as the headline states, allow doctors to “spot dementia 10 years earlier.” This is an important distinction. Identifying important risk factors for dementia can be valuable, in part because it gives patients opportunities to make lifestyle changes that may reduce that risk. On the other hand, telling readers that a test can spot dementia “10 years earlier” makes it sound as if the outcome is a foregone conclusion.

Cost isn’t discussed. Various online estimates for carotid ultrasounds put them at $200-$800. Here’s what the story says: “People with the most intense pulses, which pointed to a greater and more irregular blood flow, were up to 50% more likely to suffer reduced cognitive functions.” First, we need to point out that it wasn’t a pulse researchers were measuring, but something known as forward compression waves (FCW) in the neck arteries. The story doesn’t include vital data-driven information for readers, such as: Also the story never makes it clear that, based on these observational study results, we don’t really know if doctors can “spot dementia 10 years earlier” just because of FCW. Nor that we have no know way of knowing to what extent identifying this risk allows patients to take action to improve their FCW score and therefore improve cognitive outcomes. Some useful reading: Observational studies: Does the language fit the evidence? Association vs. causation Absolute vs relative risk The biggest risk with a screening test like this is incorrect results–false positives and false negatives, which the story never explains. There is significant harm that can result if a person thinks they are at high risk of dementia when they aren’t, or thinks they’re at low-risk when they’re high risk. These are otherwise known as a test’s sensitivity and specificity and they should have been discussed, especially how these unknowns will guide next steps for future research. The story never explains that the study is observational, so cause-and-effect conclusions can’t be drawn. It hints at the need for future research, which would have been a good segue to talk about the limitations of this study. No disease mongering here. However, it is worth noting that the story does make one confusing statement. In a sentence immediately following a paragraph about dementia, the story states that “In the United States, the condition is the sixth biggest cause of death among all adults.” That’s inaccurate. Alzheimer’s disease, specifically, is the sixth leading cause of death among all adults, according to the CDC. Dementia and Alzheimer’s are lumped together by the UK’s Office for National Statistics, which may have led to the confusion. The story does not address conflicts of interest. The study abstract notes that several researchers have ties to The Brain Protection Company. It is not clear to what extent that company may potentially benefit from the findings, if at all. The company does have patents related to dementia treatment (such as this one). The story explains that researchers are attempting to see if the test should be added as part of “routine screening” for risk factors. It would have been helpful to briefly explain what is currently included in routing screening. The story makes clear that more work needs to be done before this becomes anything approaching a standard of care. The story doesn’t put this study in context of previous research. What is already known about FCW and dementia? Is the first study to find a pattern between the two? The story does not appear to be based on a news release.


After discovering a doomsday asteroid was approaching Earth, world leaders created the COVID-19 pandemic in an effort to distract the world population and force everyone to spend time with their families during Earth's final days.

Explanation: This post originated with Facebook user “Scott W” whose profile seems to have been deleted in the days after he posted this message. The only biographical information we can glean from this post is that “Scott W” claims to be a retired CIA agent. It sounds like an authoritative title, but ask yourself: Why would a retired CIA agent be privy to this “secret” plan?

We’ve come across a number of “doomsday asteroid” rumors over the years. These claims typically stem from fearmongering headlines that make NASA’s observations appear scarier than they actually are. In early March 2020, for instance, tabloids published articles claiming that NASA had issued a warning about a large asteroid approaching Earth that could, it if hit, end civilization. These articles referenced a real asteroid, but they misrepresented NASA’s observations as a “warning” and failed to mention in headlines how the space agency’s data showed the asteroid passing Earth at a safe distance of a nearly 4 million miles (16 times farther than the moon). In March 2020, we came across a fresh variation of this formula. This time, a viral Facebook post claimed that NASA and the Vatican Observatory were hiding the discovery of a doomsday asteroid, and world leaders had implemented a “scapegoat” virus — the coronavirus, which causes COVID-19 — in order to distract the global population from their imminent demise and force people to spend more time with family as they sheltered in place:  The World Deserves the Truth…. Please brace yourself for the following information I’m about to share with you. It’s not going to be easy to understand or cope with and I’m sure many will reject the truth entirely, but I can no longer keep this classified information from the public, so do with it what you will. In the first week of November 2019, NASA and the Vatican Observatory both discovered and confirmed a fast approaching comet that is so extremely large that a collision with earth on its current path is inevitable. On November 9th 2019, the United Nations held a secret meeting with world leaders to develop an “exist strategy” to make everyone as comfortable as possible for what scientists have carefully calculated and confirmed as the apocalypse in the months to follow. The plan would implement a scapegoat virus (COVID-19) which will cause flu like symptoms, spread easily/fast, distract from the truth, and force a worldwide quarantine with the sole purpose of initiating home time to be spent with family, while minimizing the overall panic, anarchy, and premature mass casualties that would otherwise take over with public knowledge / foresight of the apocalypse. Unfortunately we are not talking about an obstacle we will have the ability to overcome, this comet will bring with it death and extinction of every living organism we know to exist, a complete global annihilation from which there will be no survivors or Earth as we know it. Understandably the UN doesn’t want to create a global panic, however I truly believe that everyone should have the right to know, and deserves a chance to accept this truth. The details of this information will all be confirmed in the weeks leading up to the end, watch as the global elites step down from their positions by the masses, they will be doing exactly what they want you to do, which is spend time at home with family and be at peace. These are certainly scary times, but it is my hope that we as a civilization can be responsible with this information, and come together to enjoy what brief moments we have left on this beautiful planet. With love, peace, and blessings to all humanity, your brother/friend and recently retired CIA agent, Scott W. This post, in a word, is nonsense. But let’s take a closer look at some of its logical flaws:  The gist of the post is that world leaders released a “scapegoat virus” in order to distract people around the world from their imminent death-by-asteroid. In addition to providing a diversion, this virus also allowed world leaders to announce a global quarantine and force people to stay at home with their families, according to the post. But that isn’t what happened. World leaders did not come together to announce in one voice that everyone should stay home and spend time with family. Rather, the response to the spread of COVID-19 has differed from one country to the next. In the United States, even, some cities and states are currently under shelter-in-place orders, but others are not. If the goal was to make people spend more time with family before the apocalypse, wouldn’t these self-quarantine orders be more uniform? Messaging from the United States government also appears to fly in the face of this rumor. President Donald Trump recently said that he wanted people to get back to work by mid-April, which would, of course, be a futile exercise if he knew the world was truly coming to an end. Trump was also downplaying the seriousness of this disease in early 2020, behavior which would have contradicted decisions made at some alleged “secret meeting” of world leaders in November 2019. If the plan was to force people to spend more time with family, a “scapegoat virus” may not have been the best tactic. Not all families live together under the same roof, or even in the same country. Travel restrictions put in place to help slow the spread of COVID-19 could prevent people from seeing family members for indefinite periods of time. Also, government agencies worldwide have encouraged social distancing, which has left many elderly people separated from families, as the Brooks family tried to demonstrate here:  A message from me and my dad, @Melbrooks. #coronavirus #DontBeASpreader pic.twitter.com/Hqhc4fFXbe — Max Brooks (@maxbrooksauthor) March 16, 2020  Again, if this secret plan was designed to force families to spend time together, a “scapegoat virus” may have caused more problems than this post alleges it solves. Hundreds of thousands of people have been diagnosed with COVID-19 and that has caused medical personnel to work overtime. Because they are at risk for contracting the disease, some doctors are practicing social distancing from their own families. While the COVID-19 pandemic has shut down many businesses, such as restaurants and bars, “essential services” are still operating. Delivery drivers, grocery store employees, warehouse workers, etc., are all people with families, too. From what we can tell, world leaders did not convene at the United Nations on this date to discuss the release of a “scapegoat virus” in order to distract attention from a doomsday asteroid. Trump, for instance, attended a college football game in Louisiana on this date, while German Chancellor Angela Merkel was commemorating the fall of the Berlin wall. While, theoretically, this “secret meeting” could have happened via teleconference, we are highly skeptical of the notion that leaders from the 193 sovereign states that are members of the United Nations would have unanimously agreed over the course of a single meeting to let a potentially deadly virus loose in order to distract the world from an asteroid. Central to the post’s bogus claim is the assumption that COVID-19 was human-made. But this idea has been repeatedly debunked by scientists studying the disease. Put simply, COVID-19 was not made in a laboratory. Live Science writes: “No evidence suggests that the virus is man-made. SARS-CoV-2 closely resembles two other coronaviruses that have triggered outbreaks in recent decades, SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV, and all three viruses seem to have originated in bats. In short, the characteristics of SARS-CoV-2 fall in line with what we know about other naturally occurring coronaviruses that made the jump from animals to people.” And again, for reasons mentioned above, manufacturing a pandemic does not seem like the ideal way to get people to spend more time among family.


Weighing effectiveness versus risk in obesity drugs

Explanation: This story endeavors in a noble task: providing readers with an assessment of the landscape for obesity drugs. We wish more stories took this broad view when writing about new drug studies or approvals. The article does a good job of framing the key issues, asking, essentially, whether is there enough benefit to justify the side effects. Not often do stories address this issue, and we applaud their approach. The story comes close to achieving a balance in its attempt to answer this question. For example, the statements by Thomas and Wolfe are excellent alternative opinions to the views espoused by the obesity drug expert camp. But we wish this story had gone beyond a he said/she said look at the evidence and that it had not relied so heavily on sources that have strong ties to the pharmaceutical industry, which is pushing hard for looser restrictions on anti-obesity drug approvals. There also is some clear disease-mongering in the article, which gives it the unsavory taste while you read it. As this story notes, a third of the US adult population is obese, and the situation has only worsened in recent years, despite concerted public health efforts to address this serious public health threat. Pills, though, are just one part of the equation. From reading this story, people might believe that the only reason people are obese is because they don’t have access to the right pills. How does this explain the huge contrast between the US and other developed countries in terms of obesity? How does this explain the rapid rise in average body-mass index over the past three decades and the resulting rise in diabetes, heart disease and other health problems? The story accepts as its underlying premise that obesity would melt away if drug companies could find the right pill and that they are being scared away by the big bad FDA. Even a story that is primarily focused on the drug industry and not the root causes of obesity should have given more weight to the evidence about the health problems resulting from obesity drugs.

The story never mentions the costs of drug or surgical treatments, even though it discusses numerous treatments. We wish it had spent some time on this point. The story mentions that diet programs can be not “affordable” in the long term, but what about drug treatments? Especially those that have only modest efficacy? How much does a drug like Contrave typically cost a patient? These would have been easy issues to address. The benefits of these drugs are not quantified. Instead, the benefits of exercise and diet are cited, but only to note that those remedies are ultimately ineffectual. This seems to be a selective reading of the literature. Although some harms are mentioned, the story never quantifies them. It should not have to recite detailed rates of adverse events for every drug mentioned, but it would have been nice to see at least one example detailed. This story is all about the quality of the evidence. Dr. Thomas’ quote is a case in point. “”It’s a balance,” Thomas added. Each panel carefully weighs a drug’s effectiveness against its safety. If weight-loss results look good, then potential side effects (unless they’re extremely serious) might not be weighed so heavily. But if a drug isn’t very effective, “then the safety issues become magnified.” So, for example, in the case of lorcaserin, panel members were hesitant to recommend approval because trials “barely proved” effectiveness, Thomas said.” The story engages in disease-mongering by presenting obesity as a disease that can be cured, if only the right pill is developed. Obesity deserves to be treated as a disease, but it doesn’t necessary follow that pharmaceuticals offer the only real hope of effective treatment or prevention. This story is framed as forecast of a frightening future in which drug companies stop investing in experimental weight loss pills… as if the central problem is heavy-handed regulation, rather than the difficulty of altering metabolism and other biological systems in a way that doesn’t produce unhealthy side effects. While there are independent sources that present a variety of viewpoints, readers should have told about the ties some of them have to the pharmaceutical industry. The Obesity Society, which provides the first source in the story, is funded almost entirely by drug companies. One of the quoted experts, Dr. Judith Stern, is an accomplished obesity researcher, but she is also the co-founder of the group that is now the Obesity Society. Dr. Ken Fujioka received $12,400 from drug companies in 2009. None of these conflicts is noted. The story does compare the pill approach to other methods, but we feel that the comparisons are made merely to knock down all other alternatives. This was not a serious comparison. The story’s focus is on the lack of treatment and the inability for any obesity drug to gain any traction. It does a good job on this score. It takes readers carefully through the history of anti-obesity drugs and presents, in broad terms, their successes and subsequent failures. The story does a great job explaining how difficult it has been to find a drug that will actually reduce people’s weight without raising their risk for other problems, particularly cardiovascular problems. The story does not rely on a news release.


US OKs 1st drug aimed at women with inherited breast cancer

Explanation: This story reports on the FDA’s first approval of a drug to treat certain patients with metastatic breast cancer who have a “BRCA” gene mutation. The story addresses costs and laudably notes that the supporting study doesn’t address a key outcome: patient survival. However, it reports mainly from news releases, misses some important study limitations, and doesn’t include independent voices. Certain breast cancers that affect women with inherited BRCA gene mutations are relatively small in number but difficult to treat, and they can disproportionately affect young women. As a result, drugs to treat these cancers are likely to be important news for certain patients and their families. The FDA gave its “priority review” status to olaparib, meaning it determined the drug “would significantly improve the safety or effectiveness of treating, diagnosing or preventing a serious condition.” It’s dependent upon news stories to help put that into context that people understand–does it actually “significantly” improve patient lives?

The story says Lynparza “will cost $13,886 per month without insurance, according to AstraZeneca.” It mentions that the manufacturer is offering financial assistance to pay for it. However, the story does not compare the cost to other treatments or address the question of whether insurance companies are expected to cover it, which are important questions now that the drug has been approved for use in breast cancer patients. Many patients with metastatic disease worry about reaching their lifetime insurance caps. AstraZeneca also does not specify whether the financial assistance that will be provided will cover the full cost or some percentage of the cost, and how the degree of financial assistance provided will be determined. The story says Lynparza “modestly delayed the time until cancer worsened — 7 months versus 4 months for women given one of three commonly used chemotherapies. About half the study participants responded to Lynparza compared with about a quarter of those only treated with chemotherapy. It’s unknown whether treatment increases survival.” The story could have emphasized that last point more strongly. The outcome that was studied, known as progression-free survival, is a surrogate marker. In fact, the drug claims no benefit in terms of the most vital outcome: extending survival. The story states: “Possible side effects are less severe than for chemotherapy, but serious problems can include blood and bone marrow cancers. Common side effects include nausea, fatigue, respiratory infections and blood count problems.” Although this would be a rare concern, the FDA also says: “Lynparza can cause harm to a developing fetus; women should be advised of the potential risk to the fetus and to use effective contraception. Women taking Lynparza should not breastfeed as it could cause harm to a newborn baby.” The story could have dug deeper into the study’s limitations. For example, it does not say how long the study lasted or what further testing is needed to determine whether responses may vary among different subsets of patients. According to the American Society of Clinical Oncology, “Given the relatively small size of the study, it is difficult to tell which subset of patients would benefit the most from olaparib.” Further, “More research is needed to determine how well olaparib works in cancers that worsen despite platinum-based chemotherapy, a standard regimen not included in this study, and whether platinum-based chemotherapy would be useful after cancers worsen despite olaparib.” The story does not engage in disease-mongering. However, it could have been more clear in conveying the number of breast cancer patients who might be candidates for this drug. It states: “About 250,000 people each year are diagnosed with breast cancer and just over 40,000 die from it, according to the National Cancer Institute. About 20 percent to 25 percent of patients with hereditary [emphasis added by us] breast cancers have a BRCA mutation. BRCA-related breast cancer often strikes younger people and is harder to treat than other breast cancers.” The story doesn’t say how many people diagnosed with breast cancer actually have a BRCA mutation. According to ASCO, “Up to 3% of all breast cancers occur in people with inherited changes in genes BRCA1 and BRCA2.” The story does not contain any independent sources. Also, it quotes Dr. Susan M. Domchek at the University of Pennsylvania’s Abramson Cancer Center without stating her institution’s role in the clinical trial. The story just briefly mentions the alternatives–chemotherapy. The story says the FDA just approved the drug for patients with inherited BRCA gene mutations who have undergone chemotherapy, and that it’s been on the market since 2014 for ovarian cancer. Presumably, that means it’s widely available. But, it then mentions that a “companion” blood test was also just approved to look for these genes. It’s not clear if this test specifically will be required before women receive the new drug, and if that test will be available right away. The story describes this as “the first drug aimed at women with advanced breast cancer caused by an inherited flawed gene” and “the first in a new class of medicines called PARP inhibitors to be approved for breast cancer.” While the story does not mimic a news release word-for-word, it relies heavily on two news releases, from AstraZeneca and the FDA. Both of the quotes in the story are from these news releases, for example.


Brain-dead Canadian woman kept on life support to save fetus.

Explanation: A 32-year-old Canadian woman who has been declared brain dead is being kept on life support in a Victoria, British Columbia hospital, with doctors working to keep her alive long enough to deliver her unborn son.

Robyn Benson was just 22 weeks pregnant when she complained of a headache and then collapsed on her bathroom floor, according to postings on a blog and fundraising site by her husband Dylan Benson. Her fetus, already named Iver Cohen Benson, has continued to grow in the womb. “On December 28th, I lost my wife to a sudden hemorrhage of blood to her brain,” Benson wrote. “Based on my decision, they are attempting to keep her body alive for up to 7 more weeks ... Incredibly, they have been successful in doing this for 5 weeks now.”  The goal is to wait until the fetus reaches 34 weeks, giving the baby a greater chance of survival, according to Benson. He wrote that doctors plan to deliver his son via cesarean section and that the baby will spend his first few weeks in hospital. That sets up a bittersweet deadline for the family, who will welcome a new baby and then take the mother off life support. “It is very difficult to know that our son will grow up never meeting his wonderful mother, and that we will have to say our goodbyes to Robyn within hours of seeing Iver for the first time,” Benson wrote. “She was my rock. She did so much for us, and I can’t believe I won’t get to talk to her again.”  The tragic story differs from a controversial case in Texas, where Marlise Munoz, a pregnant brain-dead woman was removed from life support at her husband’s request last month after a lengthy court battle. Her husband said Munoz had told him she did not want to be kept on life support. Unlike the Benson baby, which is healthier, Munoz’s fetus had already suffered oxygen deprivation and appeared to have deformed lower extremities, according to court documents. Texas authorities had fought to keep Munoz on life support in a case that sparked fierce debate over the rights of a fetus versus the right to die. A spokeswoman for the Vancouver Island health authority confirmed that there is a patient named Robyn Benson in the intensive care unit at the Victoria General Hospital, but was not able to provide further details due to privacy issues. The Benson family’s plight has gripped people across Canada and around the world, with donations on their fundraising site topping C$85,000 ($76,700) early on Tuesday. That has far exceeded the C$36,000 goal set by Benson, who had hoped to raise funds for bills, baby supplies and to allow him to more time at home with his new son after the birth. “I just wanted to reach out and say thank you to each and every one of you that have read our story and to those who have donated and/or shared,” he wrote on the site on Monday. “We are overwhelmed with the response from not only the community, but now the nation and beyond.”  (This story has been refiled to correct spelling of deprivation in seventh paragraph)


The Simpsons" television show predicted the fire at Notre Dame Cathedral in France in April 2019.

Explanation: The Notre Dame of Springfield also appears in the video game The Simpsons: Tapped Out.

In mid-April 2019, shortly after a fire broke out at the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, an image supposedly showing a screenshot from an episode of the television show The Simpsons started to circulate on social media attached to the claim that the longest-running American sitcom had once again “predicted” the future:  The Simpsons show did not predict the fire at Notre Dame. While a cartoon version of the Notre Dame Cathedral does appear at least once in the fictional town of Springfield, this image has been digitally edited. The original still from the show didn’t feature the church on fire, nor Mr. Burns standing outside. The Notre Dame of Springfield appears in the episode “Husbands and Knives” from the show’s 19th season. As with many other “prediction” rumors, The Simpsons was actually spoofing a previous event, not predicting one that had yet to occur. In this case, the show was parodying The Hunchback of Notre Dame. A description of the episode notes that after Homer undergoes plastic surgery to become a “trophy husband,” he gets chased by an angry mob into the Notre Dame Cathedral of Springfield with Marge in his arms: Homer (in his new hideous look) carrying Marge up the Notre Dame is reminiscent of a scene in The Hunchback of Notre Dame. After Homer gets his new and disgusting form, Mayor Quimby orders the town to raise their pitchforks and attack Homer. Homer and Marge run to the top of Notre Dame of Springfield tower and Marge, saying she wants a trophy husband, deliberately pushes Homer off the tower. Later Homer wakes up in the hospital, back to his old self, and learns it all was just a dream. While this scene did feature an angry mob carrying pitchforks and torches, the church never actually goes up in flames. Here’s the unedited image (left) and the Simpsons “prediction” image (right):