Q: Are anti-drilling forces blocking access to the world’s largest oil reserve in the western U.S.?
A: The Bakken Formation touted in a chain e-mail isn’t the world’s largest oil reserve. The amount of oil it contains, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, is less than one one-hundredth of the estimate cited in the e-mail.
Tag: chain emails
Eminently Nonsensical
Every so often, we here at FactCheck.org get a slew of questions about some huge clandestine shadowy government conspiracy. Here’s the problem with those questions: If it’s a clandestine shadowy government conspiracy, it’s a little hard to confirm or deny absolutely. In fact, that’s what the people who generate these rumors count on. They can say anything they like, and when someone refutes it, they can come back with, "Well, that’s what they
want
you to believe."
Free Money!!
The ads are popping up everywhere. We’ve seen them on the sidebar at Facebook and on the front page of The New York Times‘ online edition.
The ads are enticing, promising to tell you how you can get your hands on a share of free government money. The pitch is a scam, promising free information for a small "shipping and handling" fee. What the ads aren’t telling you (at least not outside the fine print) is that unless you are careful,
Sliming Pelosi
Pelosi has taken her place with Obama and Palin as a favorite target of false claims in chain e-mails, judging by the examples our readers send us. Here’s the truth about some of the bunk being thrown at her by anonymous Internet rumormongers. Her husband does not own a …
Unreported Stats
Q: What’s the deal with Prof. Joseph Olson’s “unreported stats” from the 2008 election?
A: This chain e-mail is a hoax. The “statistics” are grossly incorrect, and Prof. Olson says he didn’t write it.
Automakers and Charity
Q: Is it true that the Big Three American automakers made charitable contributions after 9/11, while foreign companies, by and large, did nothing?
A: Actually, foreign car companies gave lots of money, too, despite what an old chain e-mail claims.
Nancy Pelosi’s Personal Jet
Q: Did Nancy Pelosi order up a 200-seat jet for her personal use?
A: The Democratic House speaker normally flies in a 12-seat Air Force jet, just as her Republican predecessor did. This rumor stems from a request by the House sergeant at arms, not Pelosi, for a jet large enough to reach California without refueling.
Special Favors from Nancy Pelosi?
Q: Did Nancy Pelosi get wage breaks and tax credits for the American Samoan operations of a company in which her husband owns $17 million worth of stock?
A: This widely e-mailed claim is false. Pelosi’s husband doesn’t own that stock, despite what a bogus Wikipedia entry briefly claimed. Furthermore, American Samoa never got the minimum wage exemption it sought.
A Spam Metamorphosis
We’ve seen a lot of misleading spam this season claiming Sen. Barack Obama is guilty of one or all of the following:
He won’t place his hand over his heart for the national anthem.
He refuses to wear a flag pin.
He replaced the American flag on his campaign plane with his campaign logo.
He has listened to Rev. Jeremiah Wright say offensive remarks such as “God damn America.”
Now the claims have appeared in an ad from the conservative group Our Country Deserves Better PAC.
Obama’s Citizenship and the Survival of the Fittest
Yesterday we posted something about the evolution of rumors. Here’s a postscript: Sometimes in addition to developing new eyespots or camouflage, they actually engage in a little adaptive development — rumors that aren’t working mutate into slightly altered versions that haven’t been debunked yet.
A case in point: First there was the canard that Obama didn’t have a valid U.S. birth certificate. We were able to help put that one to bed. (Never mind the additional rumor it spawned due to the erroneous date stamp on our photos of the document,