weekly evidence drill
fact-check friday.
one claim goes up each friday. bring your verdict monday — with sources.
- week 01
"The average person swallows eight spiders a year in their sleep."
after we've argued it +
Debunked — and beautifully: the "fact" is often traced to a piece written about how easily fake facts spread. The perfect week-one claim.
- week 02
"The Great Wall of China is visible from space with the naked eye."
after we've argued it +
Debunked — astronauts, including Chinese astronaut Yang Liwei, report it is not. Cities at night, however, are.
- week 03
"A penny dropped from the Empire State Building could kill a pedestrian."
after we've argued it +
Debunked — terminal velocity of a penny is too low. Physics does the fact-checking here.
- week 04
"The CIA once spent millions training a cat to eavesdrop on the Soviets."
after we've argued it +
Confirmed — Acoustic Kitty, declassified 2001. The lesson: absurd does not mean false. Verify, then laugh.
- week 05
"Humans only use 10% of their brains."
after we've argued it +
Debunked — imaging shows nearly all of the brain is active over a day. A myth with a century of staying power.
- week 06
"Napoleon was unusually short."
after we've argued it +
Misleading — he was average height for his era; the confusion mixes French and English units, plus British propaganda did the rest.
- week 07
"The US government seriously proposed nuking the Moon."
after we've argued it +
Confirmed — Project A119, a Cold War-era study. Documented by physicists who worked on it.
- week 08
"Goldfish have a three-second memory."
after we've argued it +
Debunked — they can be trained and remember for months. Sorry to everyone who used this excuse.
- week 09
"Einstein failed math class."
after we've argued it +
Debunked — he mastered calculus by his early teens and said so himself when shown the claim. Check the primary source: his transcript.
- week 10
"Sugar makes kids hyperactive."
after we've argued it +
Debunked — double-blind studies find no effect; parents rate kids as hyper when TOLD they had sugar. A lesson in expectation bias.
- week 11
"The FBI kept a file on Albert Einstein."
after we've argued it +
Confirmed — over 1,400 pages, released under FOIA. He was watched for his political views for decades.
- week 12
"Medieval people believed the Earth was flat."
after we've argued it +
Debunked — scholars knew it was round since antiquity. The myth was largely invented by 19th-century writers.
- week 13
"Lemmings follow each other off cliffs."
after we've argued it +
Debunked — the famous 1958 documentary footage was staged; the crew drove them. The camera can be the conspiracy.
- week 14
"The Pentagon has acknowledged videos of objects it cannot identify."
after we've argued it +
Confirmed — but watch the leap: unidentified means unidentified. Where the claim goes next is where the grading starts.
- week 15
"You can see the exact moment the Berlin Wall "fell" — one official announcement did it."
after we've argued it +
Confirmed, roughly — a botched press conference answer ("immediately, without delay") opened the gates that night. Accidents make history too.
- week 16
"Water drains the opposite direction in the southern hemisphere."
after we've argued it +
Misleading — the Coriolis effect is real at hurricane scale, negligible in your sink. True physics, false application.
- week 17
"A Michigan town once elected a dog as mayor."
after we've argued it +
Verdict for the class to run down — several US towns have had honorary animal mayors (Rabbit Hash, Kentucky, famously). Michigan? Investigate.
- week 18
"This class made you harder to fool."
after we've argued it +
Unproven — until you cash in your day-one exit ticket this week. Let’s check the evidence.