http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/ en-us Copyright 2008 Fri, 09 May 2008 06:00:00 -0400 http://www.movabletype.org/?v=3.36 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Rosie O'Donnell "The government did give syphilis to black Americans for 40 years. What [Rev. Jeremiah Wright] was saying is in his history, in his genetic memory, he knows what it's like for the government to infect his own people. Because he lived through those Tuskegee experiments." --Rosie O'Donnell, May 5, NBC Today Show. Some myths are practically impossible to eradicate, particularly when they are repeated by trusted public figures. Long before the Rev. Jeremiah Wright talked about the U.S. government using the AIDS virus as a means of genocide against African-Americans, prominent commentators made equally fallacious assertions about the Tuskegee syphilis study. The list of people claiming that the government deliberately infected African-Americans with syphilis includes Wright, Tom Brokaw, Peter Jennings--and now Rosie O'Donnell. The Facts As outlined in a previous post , the Tuskegee study involved a group of 399 black men suffering from syphilis, who were http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2008/05/the_tuskegee_experiment_part_i.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2008/05/the_tuskegee_experiment_part_i.html MSM Watch Fri, 09 May 2008 06:00:00 -0400 MSNBC Debate, Cleveland, Ohio, Feb. 26, 2008. Here are a few more controversies that cropped up in the Democratic debate on Tuesday night that I was unable to fact check immediately. Readers wrote in with dozens of tips and questions, which have provided more material for truth squadding. You can read the comments here. Thanks! What would FDR have done? Hillary Clinton says that her health care plan is "universal," while Obama's plan leaves out "15 million Americans." The New York senator bases her claim on the fact that her plan includes an individual mandate requiring all Americans to purchase health insurance. Obama's health care plan contains a mandate on parents to purchase health insurance for their children, but no mandate on adults. Defending her approach, Clinton said the following: "It would be as though Franklin Roosevelt said, let's make Social Security voluntary...Let's let everybody in if they can http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2008/02/readers_fact_check_dem_debate.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2008/02/readers_fact_check_dem_debate.html Candidate Watch Thu, 28 Feb 2008 06:00:00 -0400 "I never said that we should try to go ahead and get single-payer [health insurance system]. What I said was that if I were starting from scratch, if we didn't have a system in which employers had typically provided health care, I would probably go with a single-payer system." --Barack Obama, Democratic debate on CNN, Myrtle Beach, S.C., January 22, 2008. During the CNN debate from Myrtle Beach, Hillary Clinton cited Obama's earlier advocacy of a single-payer health insurance system as an example of his inconsistency on health care issues. Obama indignantly denied the charge, arguing that he may have been in favor of a single-payer system in principle--"if I were starting from scratch"--but did not regard it as a practical proposition for the United States. The Clinton campaign promptly dug up an old 2003 clip in which Obama described himself as "a proponent of a single-payer health care http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2008/01/obama_and_health_care.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2008/01/obama_and_health_care.html Candidate Watch Thu, 24 Jan 2008 06:00:00 -0400 We assembled a team of crack fact checkers to truth squad the Republican and Democratic debates at Saint Anselm College in Manchester, and call the candidates out for any inaccuracies. Environmental reporter Juliet Eilperin was sitting next to me in the media filing center. She is also an expert on Congress, having covered it all her life. We were joined in Washington by John Solomon, a veteran political reporter for the Associated Press and now the Post, and diplomatic reporter Glenn Kessler. Prior to the foreign policy beat, Glenn covered economics. I was a foreign correspondent for the Post for more than a decade, and also covered education, so I hope we will be able to weigh in quickly on most factual disputes. Backing us up In Washington were ace researcher Alice Crites and editor Steve Ginsberg. Since this was a live fact check, we are not going to issue http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2008/01/live_debate_fact_check.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2008/01/live_debate_fact_check.html Live Fact Check Sat, 05 Jan 2008 22:44:14 -0400 Posing for a portrait in Clear Lake, Iowa. "Hillary will begin immediate phased withdrawal [from Iraq] with a definite timetable to bring our troops home."--Clinton campaign leaflet, New Hampshire. "The reports that you provide to us really require the willing suspension of disbelief...If you look at all the evidence that's been presented, overall civilian deaths have risen." --Sen. Clinton, addressing General David Petraeus during his Senate testimony on Iraq, September 10, 2007. Hillary Clinton is known for her focused, highly disciplined style of campaigning. She prepares exceptionally carefully for speeches and debates and makes fewer factual errors than some of her rivals. The mistakes that she does make are often the result of a poll-driven approach to politics, to appeal to as many voters as possible by fudging her position. She wants to win over hard core Democratic voters in the early primary states without limiting her freedom of http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2007/12/most_revealing_bloopers_hillar_1.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2007/12/most_revealing_bloopers_hillar_1.html Candidate Watch Sun, 09 Dec 2007 07:30:00 -0400 Mexican Marines guard large cocaine haul in November "It's unprecedented...This is not only the deepest shortage [in the retail cocaine market] but it's the longest we have seen." --White House Drug Czar John Walters,`interview with Washington Post, November 9, 2007. "We've never had disruptions of this magnitude before." --Walters press conference in Bogota, Colombia, November 7, 2007. A reality check in the "war on drugs." Drug Czar John Walters touted similar disruptions to the cocaine market in the United States back in 2005, but the progress turned out to be short-lived. Is there any reason we should believe him this time? Unfortunately, the statistical methodology used by his office and the Drug Enforcement Administration is extremely opaque. http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2007/11/is_there_a_cocaine_shortage_1.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2007/11/is_there_a_cocaine_shortage_1.html Gov Watch Wed, 21 Nov 2007 06:00:00 -0400 Obama and Clinton have different solutions for health care. Democratic Debate in Las Vegas, November 15, 2007 HILLARY CLINTON: "His plan would leave 15 million Americans out...I have a universal health care plan that covers everyone." BARACK OBAMA: "The fact of the matter is that I do provide universal health care." They can't both be right--or can they? The health care plans proposed by Senators Clinton and Obama are similar in many ways, but they differ in several important respects. The Clinton plan "mandates" health insurance for everyone. The Obama plan requires that all children have insurance, and subsidizes health care for other Americans who are presently uninsured. Clinton estimates that her plan will cost in the region of $110 billion a year; Obama has put a $50 to $65 billion price tag on his proposals. http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2007/11/clinton_vs_obama_on_health_car.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2007/11/clinton_vs_obama_on_health_car.html Candidate Watch Mon, 19 Nov 2007 06:00:00 -0400 On the campaign trail in New Hampshire. "I made my decision about what to do about prostate cancer in 2000....The statistics, as of the time I made the decision, are absolutely accurate and I stand by them....I said, 82 percent chance of survival in the United States in 2000, 44 percent chance of survival in England. [Actually] it's a 43 percent chance of survival in England back in 2000." --Rudy Giuliani, on November 2, defending his disputed claim that his chances of surviving prostate cancer were almost twice as high in the U.S. as in England, "under socialized medicine." The former New York mayor would have us believe that he was off by one percentage point at most in calculating his chances of surviving prostate cancer in Britain. In fact, he was wrong the first time, and he is equally wrong the second time. Epidemiologists say that his claim http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2007/11/four_pinocchios_for_rudy_the_r.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2007/11/four_pinocchios_for_rudy_the_r.html Candidate Watch Wed, 07 Nov 2007 06:00:00 -0400 "I had prostate cancer, five, six years ago. My chances of surviving prostate cancer and thank God I was cured of it, in the United States, 82 percent. My chances of surviving prostate cancer in England, only 44 percent under socialized medicine." --Rudy Giuliani, New Hampshire radio advertisement, October 29, 2007. The former New York mayor has had personal experience battling prostate cancer, but he's confused about the stats, according to several experts we consulted. http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2007/10/rudy_miscalculates_cancer_surv.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2007/10/rudy_miscalculates_cancer_surv.html Candidate Watch Tue, 30 Oct 2007 07:00:00 -0400 Romney and Giuliani line up for Sunday's debate with other Republican candidates. Republican Debate on Fox News, October 21, 2007: MITT ROMNEY: "We solved the problem of health care in our state not by having government take it over, the way Hillary Clinton would [but] with private, free-enterprise approaches...Hillary says the federal government's going to tell you what kind of insurance, and it's all government insurance." RUDY GIULIANI: "We only have 17 million people in America who buy their own health insurance. If we have 50 million or 60 million people who bought their own health insurance, the price of health insurance would be cut in more than half." Republican candidates have been vying among themselves to denounce "Hillary Care" as tantamount to the introduction of "socialized medicine," and a government-run health system, similar to the British National Health system. The Clinton campaign argues that the senator's federal health http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2007/10/hillary_care_and_socialized_me.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2007/10/hillary_care_and_socialized_me.html Candidate Watch Wed, 24 Oct 2007 06:00:00 -0400 "Americans are getting fatter and dumber... If things are going bad, just remember who put these people in power." -- Former Sen. Mike Gravel, Democratic candidate for president, Yahoo/Slate/Huffington Post debate mashup, September 2007. To be fair to Gravel, he made this incendiary claim in response to a question from the late-night TV comedian Bill Maher, who cited statistics showing that obesity had risen to an "all-time high," SAT scores have declined, and 38 per cent of fourth graders cannot read at basic level. Challenged by Maher to "tell Americans that they're getting fatter and dumber," Gravel obliged, adding for good measure that Americans would "get the government they deserve." But is the underlying data correct? The Facts There seems little doubt that Americans are getting fatter. According to data collected by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the incidence of obesity among adults increased from 15 per http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2007/09/mike_gravel_americans_are_gett_1.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2007/09/mike_gravel_americans_are_gett_1.html Candidate Watch Wed, 19 Sep 2007 06:15:07 -0400