442
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... ...
- 22.6k
239
votes
Does America not lead the world in mass shootings?
As discussed in this answer and this answer when you use a term like "mass shooting", your results become particularly sensitive to your definition. Additionally, results will be sensitive to search ...
- 3,176
203
votes
Were there 18 school shootings in the US from Jan 1 to Feb 14, 2018?
In summary there appears to be at least 18 gun incidents in, or around, schools between 1st January and 14th February 2018. They are not all of the "mass shooting" variety one might expect from the ...
- 9,066
191
votes
Do COVID-19 vaccines cause two deaths for every three deaths they prevent?
A series of comments on the article's PubPeer appears to entirely invalidate the paper's conclusion; the paper commits several classic errors which have been previously discussed on skeptics.se.
First ...
- 1,934
166
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
144
votes
Accepted
Can 1 in 1,000 black men expect to be killed over the course of their lifetime by the police?
The statement by John Oliver that "1 in 1,000 black men can expect to be killed by the police" is supported by research of the highest calibre. There is a peer reviewed paper in one of the most ...
- 57.9k
135
votes
Do COVID-19 vaccines cause two deaths for every three deaths they prevent?
Update (7/9/21): The paper was retracted on July 2, 2021. The retraction cited the same concern that not all deaths reported to national government systems are necessarily caused by the vaccine, while ...
- 14.2k
133
votes
Accepted
Did COVID-19 take the lives of 3,100 Americans in a single day, making it the third deadliest day in American history?
The numbers on the chart seem to be close for the most part, although there are other events that match the criteria of this image that should be included.
We are going to assume, for the sake of ...
- 22.4k
130
votes
Accepted
Do one quarter of Swedes named 'Ali' have a criminal record?
The short answer: the post uses invalid figures to support their claim "roughly 24 percent of all Alis in Sweden have a conviction". Furthermore, they are misrepresenting what their figures ...
- 9,537
117
votes
Do 90% of employees who accept a counteroffer still end up leaving after a year?
There is no recent study to back up that claim
As you (and others in the comments to that Workplace.SE answer) noticed, none of the articles cited have any citations themselves. While looking into ...
- 6,129
116
votes
Do the 26 richest billionaires own as much wealth as the poorest 3.8 billion people?
Short Answer: True.
Every year, in time for Davos (i.e. the Annual Meeting for the World Economic Forum), Oxfam releases a report about the state of inequality. Here's a link to their latest. ...
- 1,176
109
votes
Accepted
Does America not lead the world in mass shootings?
In a comment, @MikhailGerasimov gave a link to the list of incidents.
By browsing this, it is clear that the claims include acts of terrorism and war. (But being curiously selective about it, I found ...
- 1,556
89
votes
Do vote counts for Joe Biden in the 2020 election violate Benford's Law?
Looking at the actual Chicago data at https://www.chicagoelections.gov/en/election-results-specifics.asp by precinct as of late November 7, the charts for Chicago look credible but the assumption that ...
- 13.5k
88
votes
Does America not lead the world in mass shootings?
Snopes explains it as cherry picking:
The first thing to note about the rankings is that Lott has compared
the mass shooting death rate in the United States with that of other
countries where there ...
- 4,703
88
votes
Accepted
Is Kamala Harris' approval rating the lowest of any vice president?
As has been pointed out, the 28% is an outlier. The average poll still has her at around 41%.
If we look at that 41% value, she is still above past vice presidents. Mike Pence eg polled at times ...
- 52.1k
80
votes
Has the marijuana black market in Colorado increased since the state repealed its state laws prohibiting it?
This question has one claim in the title and four others in the body
1. The black market in Colorado has increased since legalization
Possible. There are claims many places including here that ...
- 4,360
76
votes
Can 1 in 1,000 black men expect to be killed over the course of their lifetime by the police?
Putting aside the reputation of the journal for a second, it is nevertheless possible to examine carefully the citation and methodology of the paper and find it to be a good representation of reality. ...
- 611
64
votes
Accepted
2 % of 'the rich' pay 50 % of taxes in Germany
Not true for "taxes", not even true for "income tax" alone.
According to the official government statistics for the year 2014 –– and include those a bit more who are not really considered "rich ...
- 44.1k
62
votes
Accepted
Were there 18 school shootings in the US from Jan 1 to Feb 14, 2018?
It depends on what you classify as 'school shooting' and most people would consider this number too high.
You can find an overview over 17 incidents (together with news sources) at:
...
- 1,961
62
votes
Accepted
Have one in four American women had an abortion?
TL/DR: Rikelson's actual claim is supported by a 2017 estimate. The quoted claim is slightly different.
Population Group Abortion Rates and Lifetime Incidence of Abortion: United States, 2008–2014 ...
- 145k
56
votes
Does America not lead the world in mass shootings?
TL;DR? The USA has so many mass shootings that the average deaths-per-shooting is lower than other places.
Let's break down what he's calculating: The rates of murder from mass public shootings per ...
- 2,155
50
votes
2 % of 'the rich' pay 50 % of taxes in Germany
The top 20% of income earners pay 50% of Einkommensteuer&Lohnsteuer (income tax), which in turn accounts for 33% of total tax income for the state. (Lohn and Einkommen are separate here, because ...
- 1,686
49
votes
Do the 26 richest billionaires own as much wealth as the poorest 3.8 billion people?
That statistic is at least plausible, and likely true. Children have essentially no wealth, so to start out the richest are already ahead of about 25% of the world (about 1.9 billion people) simply by ...
- 1,671
47
votes
Are 20% of automobile drivers under the influence of marijuana?
In short: No
I first tried to find the article's own source, however the Florida Department of Families and Children did not have any such information that I could find. There are other Departments of ...
- 2,401
42
votes
Has the time available to escape a house fire decreased significantly due to "modern furniture"?
This statement appears to be partially true.
The source of the claim is research conducted by Underwriters Laboratories. Underwriters Laboratories is approved by OSHA to perform safety testing, so ...
- 864
41
votes
Did Qatar spend 229 billion USD on the 2022 FIFA World Cup?
Read the actual Reuters claim more carefully. They are saying that the infrastructure spending of the entire nation of Qatar over the last eleven years was $229 billion. They make no claim of how much ...
- 1,924
40
votes
Accepted
Are most US mass shooters Democrats?
There is little evidence upon which this list is based, even after
extensive searches, and many of those records seem to be inaccurate, or
later corrected.
To quote Snopes:
We searched contemporary ...
- 5,542
40
votes
Accepted
Did the percent of humans living on < $2/day drop from 94% to 8.6% since 1820?
According to World Income Inequality 1820-2000 by Joerg Baten, Peter Foldvari, Bas van Leeuwen and Jan Luiten van Zanden, Table 5, in 1820 73% of people had real incomes of less than 2 1990 dollars ...
- 109k
38
votes
Did Qatar spend 229 billion USD on the 2022 FIFA World Cup?
I've obtained a rough breakdown of costs from BBC Radio's More or Less podcast:
Construction of stadiums: $8 billion
Construction of 140 new hotels with 55,000 rooms in total: $...
- 693
37
votes
Are deaths of patients with, but not because of, COVID-19 recorded as COVID-19 deaths in the USA?
The larger context of Birx's quote is::
There are other countries that if you had a preexisting condition and let's say the virus caused you to go to the ICU and then have a heart or kidney problem ...
- 52.1k
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible