The End of Fact-Checking: Introducing True North and Alexandra (Elly) Marshall, The Latest Vanguards of Rationalism

Fact-checking the fact-checkers leads to counter-fact checking, and counter-counter fact-checking, ad infinitum, ad frustra. In other words, it's time to return to non-authoritarian based dialog.

During the peak, of the 2020-2021 COVID-19 heyday, IPAK, or me as an individual was subjected to the recently invented experience in diatribe called “fact-checking”. Each time, I presented the so-called fact-checkers with evidence that countered their claims as off-target or baseless.

Take, for example, the time that peer-reviewed science was “fact-checked” by USA Today over the correct assessment made by Ealy et al. that the CDC was over-reporting COVID-19 case numbers. (In reality, due to their lack of adjustment for the false-positive rates of the PCR testing done with arbitrarily high Ct thresholds, they HAD to be overestimating COVID-19 case numbers). The story, written by Rick Rouan on 2/16/2021, is still out there, as false as a wolf to a heifer’s calf (Shakespeare).

My accurate report is that the early Moderna data showed a 21% serious adverse event rate among recipients who received two doses of their mRNA vaccine. Here’s that so-called Fact-Check article of Dec 2020. To his credit, the author, Jon Greenberg, had called me to ask me where I got the 21%, but I was busy at the time he called in an all-day meeting with a few important people in Chicago and he published it before I could return his phone call.

When I did return his call, I pointed him to the very data showing 21% in the early data. He, and of course USA Today, had not noticed the very early date of the source of the 21% value, and they had assumed that they were watching the more recent video and that I was referencing later data from larger clinical trials.

Since I could prove that the article as originally written was false, the article was retracted - right? Wrong. The so-called “Fact Check” website instead chose to break its own rules of transparency and simply performed post-publication editing, with no acknowledgment of me as the source of the correction to the original, incorrect assessment of what I had reported. The article shifted to a claim that my “claim” (i.e., my direct reference to Moderna data) was inflated 40-fold. Of course, they are wrong; the preliminary report I was citing reported 21%.

(See: “ABOUT THAT 21 PERCENT – FACT-CHECKERS TAKE NOTE” on jameslyonsweiler.com)

As the so-called Fact Checkers changed their story, they reached out to a Johns Hopkins researcher who claimed that he could not determine where I got the 21% number from. That to me was stunning; COVID-19 had the world in its grip, and a so-called expert at Johns Hopkins was not tracking the data coming out of Moderna. Worse, the so-called Fact Checking website relied on someone unable to track its source.

So I wrote an article describing how stunned I was at the poor awareness by a Johns Hopkins researcher - originally called the “expert” out by name.

See “SCIENTIST STUNNED: XXXXX XXXXXXX RESEARCHER ADMITS HE DOES NOT KNOW ABOUT KEY VACCINE SAFETY FINDING. AFP.COM FLOPS IN FACT-CHECKING THE 21%”

The study to which I was referring did, in fact, report a 21% increase in serious adverse events in recipients of the Moderna vaccine. USA Today cited a source that misapplied that rate to another, later study.

So much for “Fact” checking by AFP. Pathetic.

Opinion Blog Websites Have No Special Claim to Legitimacy

During this period, I developed a keen sense that so-called Fact Check websites were nothing more than self-aggrandized, self-anointed people with opinions - in other words, so-called “Fact Checker” websites were merely opinion-based blog websites.

True North Fact Checks Reuters

There’s a superb group, True North, in Canada making sure that objectivity persists in the new media reporting. This group, which by my assessment has a conservative leaning, has done a yeoman’s job analyzing and reporting on the nonsensical baloney that has come from the Trudeau administration.

This weekend, Andrew Lawton and Harrison Faulkner describe the experience of True North with the fallacy of “Fact-Checking” on the issue of Pfizer never doing studies to determine whether their vaccine could prevent transmission. Preventing transmission was, of course, the entire basis of the justification of government vaccine mandates.

Pfizer’s original official position (which they Tweeted) was

“The ability to vaccinate at speed to gain herd immunity and stop transmission is our highest priority. There is a lot of work ahead, and our focus is on supporting points of vaccination, as that’s key to increasing the volume of people getting vaccinated every day.”

Truth North also reviews the absurdity of “Fact Checking” round robins like the one experienced by Alexandra Marshall, who fact-checked the fact-checkers only for Facebook to immediately fact-check her fact-check. I am grateful to Truth North for putting me on to Alexandra Marshall @EllyMelly on Twitter; please follow her and tell her I said hello since Twitter has permanently suspended my account (Elly, if you read this, I’m happy to publish articles here on Popular Rationalism by you!):

Alexandra Marshall @ellymelly

You have to be absolutely bloody kidding me! The Facebook 'fact checkers' FACT CHECKED my article about them... Is the whole of reality parody??? WTF!

(See: FLAT WHITE Are fact-checkers liars? Spectator.com)

Truth North’s understanding of the fallacy of “Fact Checking” is in perfect alignment with my assessment, and is, in my assessment, worth a viewing.

Let’s take back the internet. It’s time for the End of Fact-Checking. When you see them publishing their opinions, be sure to call them out for confusing their subjective regurgitation of the official narrative of the day with “Truth”.

Drop by True North, drop them a line and let them know Dr. Jack is a fan!