441
votes
Do vote counts for Joe Biden in the 2020 election violate Benford's Law?
This answer only addresses the second charts. I'll let Mathematician Matt Parker address Benford's Law.
I can confirm [the result is] actually exactly what you'd expect, that's not out of order... ...
- 17k
270
votes
Accepted
Are people of Nordic Nations "happier, healthier" with "a higher standard of living overall than Americans"?
These statements are absolutely supported by studies.
In the World Happiness Report ranks countries according to various life measures. It is by far the most widely used and widely reported measure ...
- 57.4k
267
votes
Did Valerie Jarrett say she wanted "America to be a more Islamic country"?
No; the caption is written in the Calibri font. This font was not developed until 2002.
Source: https://www.fonts.com/font/microsoft-corporation/calibri
- 1,803
258
votes
Did Valerie Jarrett say she wanted "America to be a more Islamic country"?
The Stanford yearbook in 1977 is mostly photos without captions.
(There is no Valerie Bowman on this page anyway, because she didn't graduate until 1978.)
It does have a few short comments that ...
- 44.4k
248
votes
Accepted
Does the President of the United States have the ability to deploy nuclear weapons at will?
According to retired Lt. General Mark Hertling, who personally participated in such drills, and wrote Nuclear Codes: The President's Awesome Power
That bag -- carried by the military aide -- has been ...
- 104k
193
votes
Accepted
Did Bernie Sanders say that a woman cannot be president?
Did Sanders say that a woman cannot be president or that that women in general lack the abilities?
No.
While some headlines – including this question's title – claim that, this is not what Warren ...
tim♦
- 51.4k
186
votes
Accepted
Did Valerie Jarrett say she wanted "America to be a more Islamic country"?
Just addressed by Snopes apparently,
The quote to attributed “Valerie Jarrett, Stanford University, 1977” about her “seek[ing] to help change America to be a more Islamic country” is an unfounded ...
- 28.4k
186
votes
Accepted
Did Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweet that businesses should stay closed until the November elections?
Polititweet.com has no references to any tweet matching the screenshot from 20 May 2020, nor any tweets from Rep. Ocasio-Cortez that mention the hashtag #KeepUsClosed.
Rep. Ocasio-Cortez's Twitter ...
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179
votes
Has BLM raised over 1 billion dollars but not yet performed any neighborhood cleanup, school funding, food aid or housing services?
So first of all, there is no central BLM organisation collecting donations. There are local organisations, some named BLM (or some variation thereof) and some which existed prior to BLM and support ...
- 1,367
178
votes
Accepted
Was ISIS created by the USA?
Some interpretations of this question are highly opinion-based and can't be answered on this website (try Quora), but others can be factually answered.
Are the leaders of ISIS Americans?
No, it's run ...
- 44.4k
172
votes
Accepted
Entire GOP voted against letting senators read the new tax bill?
The claim refers to the fact that the 500-page tax bill was given to the senators immediately before the vote. Democratic minority leader Chuck Schumer moved to adjourn, to give senators the weekend ...
- 1,335
167
votes
Accepted
Did Republicans take 10 of 13 Congressional seats in the 2018 North Carolina general election with roughly the same number of votes as Democrats?
Yes, the numbers are correct (within an error margin – probably due to different sources and time of capture).
According to the 2018 House election results (I used this handy Washington Post ...
- 3,762
167
votes
Do vote counts for Joe Biden in the 2020 election violate Benford's Law?
Disclaimer: I have not looked at the actual data.
In general, the biggest problem with applying Benford's law to district level election data is, that precincts are usually small and similar in size. ...
- 1,520
166
votes
Are crime rates up by 10% in Germany?
These statements are not supported by the official data.
According to official statistics of the German Federal Crime office the crimes in Germany 2017 are down by about 10% compared to 2016 and ...
- 4,658
160
votes
Are people of Nordic Nations "happier, healthier" with "a higher standard of living overall than Americans"?
DJClayworth's answer is right, but I would like to add on one remark in the question that that answer didn't address: "especially those at the bottom of the economic scale".
As DJClayworth's argued, ...
- 1,475
159
votes
Accepted
Was Morocco the first country to recognize USA?
Wikipedia states:
In December 1777, the Moroccan Sultan Muhammad III included the United States in a list of countries to which Morocco’s ports were open. Morocco thus became the first country whose ...
- 44.4k
157
votes
Accepted
Did Susan B. Anthony make these statements regarding suffrage for women and former slaves?
Short version: Susan B. Anthony had a long history of working as an abolitionist, but wasn't willing to settle for gradual victories on the way to women's suffrage. Combine that with a notorious ...
- 868
157
votes
Accepted
In Massachusetts, can someone be "arrested and fined up to fifty-thousand dollars" for reporting suspicious behavior in a women's bathroom?
The claim grossly misrepresents the details of the law
TL;DR $50,000 is the maximum amount someone could be liable for due to egregious and repeated discrimination on account of gender identity, and ...
- 2,401
155
votes
Did Donald Trump "[imitate] a disabled reporter"?
Donald Trump did mock a reporter - Serge Kovaleski from the New York Times. Kovaleski has a disability: arthrogryposis.
Trump denied that he mocked him for his disability and claims that he didn't ...
- 29k
151
votes
Did close to 3,000 Puerto Ricans die in Hurricane Maria?
No, President Trump is not correct that the official death toll has been exaggerated. While he's right that 3,000 people did not die in Hurricane Maria, there is evidence that nearly 3,000 people ...
- 11.4k
148
votes
Accepted
Did Donald Trump fire the entire pandemic response team in 2018?
Although it's not true that Trump himself 'fired the entire pandemic response team', it is true that in April-July of 2018 the Directorate of Global Health Security and Biodefense was dissolved, and ...
- 11.4k
143
votes
Will the healthcare premiums of a 64 year old making $26,500 a year grow to $14,600 under the GOP Health Care Plan?
This figure has been extracted from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report.
Washington Post:
According to the CBO, 64-year olds making $26,500 per year would see their premiums increase by ...
- 140k
143
votes
Was there violence on both sides in Charlottesville?
The New York Times has a photograph of a counter-protester lifting a newspaper box and the following witness explanation from a fellow counter-protestor:
I was on Market Street around 11:30 a.m. ...
- 104k
143
votes
Accepted
Did Obama defy precedent by not visiting the D-Day monument?
No, he did not.
Snopes says:
In fact, any public presidential activity paying tribute to fallen U.S. and Allied soldiers on the anniversary of D-Day has been an exception rather than the rule in ...
tim♦
- 51.4k
140
votes
Accepted
Did Trump order tear gas to be used on protesters to clear a pathway to a church for a photoshot?
I think there are three issues here: 1) Was 'tear gas' used? 2) Who ordered the attack? 3) Why did they order it?
Was 'tear gas' used?
According to the Parks Police smoke canisters and pepper balls ...
tim♦
- 51.4k
138
votes
Accepted
Did the White House Press Secretary Lie about a Pie?
According to this Gizmodo article, this controversy was started by a Twitter user who seemed to believe the photo was taken from PBS based on the URL of where the photo was hosted:
The amateur ...
- 7,136
137
votes
Did Obama apologize for the USA using nuclear weapons on Japan?
No.
He laid a wreath, mourned the dead, spoke about a moral duty to prevent the horrors of war, but didn't apologise, didn't separate the nuclear attacks from the other horrors of war, and didn't ...
- 8,942
131
votes
Accepted
Was there violence on both sides in Charlottesville?
In the literal sense, yes.
There's no question that both sides were mutually combative, engaging in fistfights and small-scale skirmishes with improvised melee weapons.
There are many accounts of ...
- 2,529
128
votes
Accepted
Did Hillary Clinton refuse to designate Boko Haram a terrorist organisation when the FBI, CIA and the Justice Department asked?
No, this is a twisting of the facts.
It's true that there was a period in 2011-13 when Clinton's State Department debated whether Boko Haram should be classified as a direct threat to the US, while ...
- 8,942
126
votes
Did Obama defy precedent by not visiting the D-Day monument?
The daily schedules of past US presidents are, in many cases, publicly available. So just for completeness, let's try to collect a list of what the sitting President was doing on June 6 of every year....
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible