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ProPublica
Science Feedback, a French nonprofit fact-checking organization that employs journalists and scientists, provided ProPublica with 427 active URLs of articles about climate change in French and other languages it has rated false since 2021. A fifth of them were earning money with Google, according to the analysis.
Rappler
How do you know if the fact-checking program works? The fact-check group Science Feedback attempted to answer this question by analyzing Facebook data captured through CrowdTangle and Buzzsumo. (…) “In our research we have been able to show how much Facebook is reducing the visibility of posts in these repeat offender accounts. We were able to transparently verify that Facebook is implementing this policy. Otherwise there is no way of knowing that. We really need this kind of data if we want to be able to measure what is happening on the platform,” Vincent told Rappler.
BBC News Brazil
BBC News Brazil reached out to Dutch microbiologist Elisabeth Bik and the editors of Science Feedback to analyze the study that served as the basis for the application TrateCov, developed by Brazil’s Ministry of Health. They found several flaws in the study. For instance, the number of participants in the study showed some discrepancies and the study was peer-reviewed in just one day, a questionably brief period of time…
PolitiFact
Without standards on capturing data on how the children reacted, and without a matched group of children who didn’t wear masks, there’s no way to say that the masks caused the children’s reactions. This Instagram post recycled a claim made in early January. The fact-checkers at Health Feedback debunked that one a few days later (hat tip to Health Feedback for their work on this.)
France 24
“A video where a woman unravels the fibre from several Covid-19 dry swabs and claims that the material is “alive” and made of “Morgellons”, a filament associated with an unproven medical condition, has garnered tens of thousands of views on both Facebook and YouTube since early January. These claims are false – the synthetic fibre of the dry swabs is not “alive” and has no connection with Morgellons disease.(…) “According to Dr. Flora Teoh, a science editor at Health Feedback, a not-for-profit organisation that fact-checks scientific and health-related content, Morgellons disease is “controversial and poorly understood”. “
The Royal Society
“The decline in global average area burned has indeed been misused to support false claims (cf. Climate Feedback fact-check) numerous times. There is strong evidence that the increase in fire activity we are seeing in many forested regions is indeed linked to climate change.”
STAT
“To lend their narratives an air of legitimacy, sites sometimes turn to shoddy scientific research. The research, which had not been peer reviewed, claimed to have found similar proteins in the new virus and HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. According to health fact-checker Health Feedback, the researchers failed to recognize that the same protein sequences could be found in a variety of organisms.”
Nieman Reports
“The good news is that a growing number of nonpartisan organizations are recruiting policy-neutral academic experts to strengthen journalism. Climate Feedback and Health Feedback use on-call academics to quickly highlight hype or spin in news reports and warn reporters against repeating misstatements of fact.”
France 24
“Most fake news, however, comes from climate sceptics who spread false claims on social media. Sometimes they are easy to decipher, but with climate change being so complicated it’s hard to cut through the barrage of misinformation. So how can one navigate climate news in the era of fake news?
In this episode of Down to Earth, we look into why climate change has become the perfect target of fake news, and what you can do to protect yourself against it.”
The Washington Post
“A recent study from the Credibility Coalition and Health Feedback, a group of scientists who evaluate the accuracy of health media coverage, found the majority of the most-clicked health stories on Facebook in 2018 were fake or contained a significant amount of misleading information. The study looked at the top 100 health stories with the most engagements on social media, and it had a network of experts assess their credibility. The study found less than half were “highly credible.”