126
votes
Accepted
Are there vaccine ingredients which may not be disclosed ("hidden", "trade secret", or similar)?
TL;DR: In the US and the EU, vaccine manufacturers are required to disclose all ingredients within the vaccine on vaccine packaging inserts available online alphabetically and European public ...
- 14.1k
105
votes
Accepted
Are there any women in the top one hundred chess players?
As of March 2017, the top rated woman is Yifan Hou, with rank of 117 and a rating of 2649. The 100th ranked player is Evgeniy Najer (male), with a rating of 2659.
Therefore, currently it is true that ...
- 2,405
97
votes
Accepted
Are there 300,000 items in the average American household, and 10,000 items in the average European household?
The sources quote Regina Lark who in turn quotes unnamed sources. The specialist in organizing and productivity writes:
Are there 300,000 Things in a Home?
One thing I remember reading impressed the ...
- 7,663
96
votes
Accepted
Did Martin Schulz say that it is not the EU philosophy that the crowd can decide its fate?
He did not.
The French newspaper Le Monde released an article debunking this claim.
The origin of the quote is a German satirical article from Contra Magazin.
(source: lemde.fr)
Original quote in ...
- 897
96
votes
Accepted
Is this map of terrorist attacks in Europe accurate?
tl;dr: The map is likely correct and based on the GTD from 2001 to 2014. As the map is not about Islamic terrorist attacks, but all terrorist attacks, no conclusion about Islamic attacks or refugees ...
tim♦
- 51.9k
85
votes
Accepted
Will the 2019 EU Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market ban memes?
BBC's coverage explains how that might happen:
Jim Killock, executive director of the UK's Open Rights Group, told the BBC: "Article 13 will create a 'Robo-copyright' regime, where machines zap ...
- 59.8k
70
votes
Accepted
Was EU flag's design inspired by the statue of Virgin Mary?
The flag was introduced 1955 as the flag for the Council of Europe, and subsequently adopted by the European Union in 1986.
The number of stars was a matter of compromise, not one of inspiration.
...
- 19k
59
votes
Accepted
Drop in IQ due to immigration?
The PISA results are available online.
The OECD also published a summary paper which described what PISA is:
[T]he OECD Programme for International Student Assessment, PISA, [is] the world’s premier ...
tim♦
- 51.9k
56
votes
Accepted
Is Spain ”the second most mountainous country in Europe”?
As the question demonstrates, the actual definitions used are unclear, and there could be many possible answers.
Chapter 3 of the Nordregio's 2004 report for the European Commission, Mountain Areas ...
- 141k
50
votes
Are there any women in the top one hundred chess players?
As of today, there are no women among the top 100 rated players.
Ratings are changing and Hou Yifan who is currently ranked No. 117 in the March 2017 FIDE World Rankings (https://ratings.fide.com/...
- 399
42
votes
Accepted
Has there been a 1101% increase in excess deaths among children aged 0-14 across Europe in 2022?
"Caveat percentor"
You can DL the dataset from EuroMOMO and do the simple arithmetic yourself. (Sorry no direct link to the dataset seems possible; they use some AJAX or stuff like that.) It'...
- 59.8k
41
votes
Accepted
Is this "fall of industrial production" graph accurate?
The raw statistics can be mined from http://stats.oecd.org which I have done using the following parameters (Sorry, it doesnt appear to be linkable!)
Selection: Production of total Industry
Frequency:...
- 9,000
32
votes
Accepted
Did (former) German Minister Manfred Lahnstein admit that Germany wanted the EMS in order to get a competitive edge over other European countries?
Yes.
But he did not have to do that in such a clandestine, private manner. Using "admit" in the question title is a bit leading. He — among many others, it was absolutely no secret — wrote to that ...
- 44.1k
28
votes
Has there been a 1101% increase in excess deaths among children aged 0-14 across Europe in 2022?
These are the graphs for mortality from EuroMOMO which are the source for the claim as far as I can determine:
There is also this article fact checking the claims of the blogger: Viral claims are ...
- 43.6k
24
votes
Is this "fall of industrial production" graph accurate?
Managing Expectations: U.K. Industrial Production gives many more countries and 3 different equalization points:
1991=100:
2006=100:
2009=100:
and another source added the total EMU:
...
- 106k
24
votes
Will Europe soon have more Muslims than Christians?
October 2017 update below. (Graph updated May 2019)
Original answer:
Self-declared identity
According to the Pew Research Center, which seems to be the main group analyzing the demographics here, ...
- 44.9k
21
votes
Was a "large number" of new COVID-19 clusters in the United States seeded by travellers from Europe?
There's minimal (ie, no) data to back that up that assertion.
Here's the timeline of first detection after China:
January 13 Thailand
January 16 Japan
January 20 South Korea
January 21 United ...
- 605
19
votes
Accepted
Has the George Soros's Open Society Foundation been banned from Austria by Sebastian Kurz?
No, this claim is completely false.
For starters, Sebastian Kurz is not yet chancellor. Although his party won the election and has been tasked by the president with forming the next government, his ...
- 861
17
votes
Accepted
Is the UK's trade with the EU artifically inflated by having to ship its exports via Europe?
This is sometimes called the "Rotterdam effect".
Sir Andrew Dilnot, Chair of the UK Statistics Authority, notes:
The term Rotterdam effect is used to describe the situation where
goods initially ...
tim♦
- 51.9k
17
votes
Accepted
Do one in three workers in Romania work for minimum wage?
The official statistics published by the European organisation Eurostat say this:
Proportion of minimum wage earners
The proportion of employees earning the minimum wage can vary considerably ...
- 44.1k
17
votes
Did Hamas dig up EU-funded water pipes and turn them into rockets?
According to an Al Jazeera documentary the water pipes for rockets are dug up from abandoned Israeli settlements:
Narrator: "The reclamation of the unexploded Israeli shells was not an easy task....
- 106k
16
votes
Accepted
Is the “climate change” responsible for the 2018 European heatwave?
The trouble with this kind of claim is that "the range of historical statistical data" does not provide clear boundaries.
A number of record high temperatures have been set this year. By ...
- 15.9k
16
votes
Accepted
Are bars in Italy using pasta as straws?
Yes, some bars in Italy are using pasta straws. But is it really surprising?
Civico5: Manduria, Italy
Image
News: "Civico5 opta per le cannucce di pasta: un atto d'amore per l'ambiente" (Civico5 ...
- 30.8k
16
votes
Was a "large number" of new COVID-19 clusters in the United States seeded by travellers from Europe?
No. The tracking of virus mutations shows that this is not true. The replication of the virus is not perfect and causes minor mutations. These mutations can be observed and give evidence about the ...
- 277
15
votes
Is this map of terrorist attacks in Europe accurate?
The claim that there are terrorist attacks all over the world but not in Poland is wrong.
The claim that the map presents a set of data, however incomplete, is correct.
The accepted answer explains ...
- 1,407
15
votes
Does the UK provide 50% of EU's waters? And does this imply anything about fishing rights?
From the European Environment Agency (an agency of the EU),
Combined EEZ of >15 million km2, the largest marine domain in the world
and
[Overseas entities] also contribute to a significant ...
- 14.1k
15
votes
Are there vaccine ingredients which may not be disclosed ("hidden", "trade secret", or similar)?
The word ingredient isn't as straightforward as it seems. There are many substances that are present in vaccines that are listed on the packaging label. That makes it unlikely that the conversation ...
- 33.3k
15
votes
Accepted
Is melatonin used as a contraceptive in Europe?
"Europe" is rather larger and more diverse than Americans sometimes think - medical practice, and medicine availability, is different in the UK than in France, and different again in the ...
- 8,469
14
votes
Accepted
Are there sections across Europe that are so radicalized by Islamic Jihadists that police refuse to go there?
I can't speak for Paris, but in the case of London this is patently false.
Several British officials have stated categorically that Donald Trump is wrong.
"We would not normally dignify such ...
- 57.5k
14
votes
Accepted
Does George Soros support plans for immigrants flows into Europe?
TLDR: if we frame the claim narrowly about migrant inflows, it's false as Fidesz has portrayed it; if we consider the context of all the other stuff Fidesz has blamed on Soros, then it looks like a ...
- 59.8k
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible