PeakMetrics / Fact Checks
Health & medicine fact checks
Explore claims publishers have checked about health & medicine. Read their original ratings and follow the evidence.
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Search by text or image13,677 published reviews in this topic
Hospitals get paid more to list patients as COVID-19.
Publisher’s rating: Half True
“DEVELOPING: Kamala’s sister takes hydroxychloroquine.”
Publisher’s rating: Half True
An image shows “a medical oddity that is characterized by having two pupils in each eyeball.”
Publisher’s rating: False
Imagen de miembros del Gobierno hablando sin respetar la distancia social
Publisher’s rating: Falso
"Look no further than Dr. Nancy Messonnier, a career official at the Centers for Disease Control who was the first to raise the alarm. … Starting the next day, Dr. Messonnier no longer appeared at public briefings of the White House coronavirus task force."
Publisher’s rating: Four Pinocchios
ProduceMaxx sprayed on organic produce at grocery stores contains pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, insecticides and antibiotics.
Publisher’s rating: Mostly False
Research from related reporting identifies ProduceMaxx as an EPA-registered antimicrobial pesticide containing hypochlorous acid, a chlorine-based compound. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s investigation and settlements concerned grocery-store use of that product in produce misting systems, including on items labeled organic. This is the same product and practice at issue in the claim, but it is not evidence that ProduceMaxx contains herbicides, fungicides, insecticides, or antibiotics. The evidence also distinguishes claims about produce being treated from claims about the product’s composition. In an excerpt from a podcast episode, guest Tim James says plants may have been sprayed with several kinds of agricultural chemicals, then describes grocery-store produce being misted with chemicals. The excerpt does not say that ProduceMaxx itself contains all those substances, and it does not mention antibiotics. The related reporting identifies hypochlorous acid as an ingredient, but the supplied excerpts do not provide a full ingredient list or laboratory analysis. The settlement reports describe requirements and allegations, not a finding that Albertsons or Sprouts violated the law. Albertsons denied wrongdoing, and reporting on the Sprouts agreement says the company denied liability and maintained its use complied with regulatory standards. The supplied evidence therefore supports the narrower point that ProduceMaxx was used in produce misting and was treated by the Texas investigation as a synthetic antimicrobial pesticide; it does not substantiate the claim’s broader list of ingredients.
"Italy drastically reduced the country's official Covid-19 death count by over 97%."
Publisher’s rating: False
The claim circulated alongside a screenshot shared by America’s Frontline Doctors, asserting that Italy had cut its official COVID-19 death count by over 97%. FactCheck.org traces the figure to a misreading of an Italian National Institute of Health (ISS) report about comorbidities among people who died with COVID-19—not to a change in Italy’s official death count. The review reports that Italy had recorded more than 130,000 COVID-19 deaths through October 5, 2021, and that the report examined data on those deaths.
“Doctor proves masks don’t work” by vaping through them.
Publisher’s rating: False
“On Jan. 8 of this year, the CDC raised alarm that the virus represented a threat to the health of American citizens.”
Publisher’s rating: Misleading
