PolitiFAIL: PolitiFact Confuses Two Government Agencies in Embarrassing “Fact Check”

In the latest display of fact checker incompetence, PolitiFact boldly corrected a story….. by confusing two different government agencies and fact checking the wrong claim.

Writer and filmmaker Leighton Woodhouse caught the error, which was made when PolitiFact tried to correct a post on the White Coat Waste Project Facebook page. The Project has the goal of ending taxpayer funded animal experiments, and recently ran an ad about Morgan Island in South Carolina where lab monkeys are bread for the National Institute of Health (NIH). The island is also known as “Monkey Island.”

A video of the ad can be viewed below:

In a comment on the ad, PolitiFact jumped in to post a “fact check” from their equally incompetent counterpart, the Associated Press. “Dr. Anthony Fauci was not involved in the research on monkey’s described here, which was conducted in a different division of the National Institutes of Health from the one in which Fauci works.”

The fact check, which was from October of last year, specifically addresses the claim that “Fauci’s experiments include one that magnified terror in the brains of monkeys and subjected them to frightening stimuli,” and concludes that “’Dr. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) is not involved and has never been involved in this study,’ NIMH’s press team said in an emailed statement. ‘Additionally, the study was not funded by NIAID.’” (NIMH is the National Institute of Mental Health).

But there was one major problem: the White Coat Waste Project was not alleging involvement from the NIMH, but rather from NIAID, which Fauci does run. The Associated Press‘ “fact check” also had nothing to do with Monkey Island – it appears that the PolitiFact brain trust just saw the word “monkeys” in the headline and assumed they were addressing the same claim.

White Coat Waste Project, a watchdog group that fights govt-funded animal testing, ran an ad on Facebook about an island in South Carolina where lab monkeys are bred for NIH. Politifact, FB’s official fact checker, jumped in to call it disinformation. There’s only one problem… pic.twitter.com/op3pgfxJXM

— Leighton Woodhouse (@lwoodhouse) May 19, 2022

Woodhouse continued:

Politifact “debunked” WCW’s ad by pointing to an article that disputed *an entirely different claim.* The AP article wasn’t about the South Carolina island. The claims in WCW’s ad are accurate, demonstrable and not in dispute.

This is one of many reasons why all the calls for social media monitoring for “disinformation” are short-sighted, ridiculous, and self-serving for those who call for it. The monitors aren’t only plainly politically biased; they’re also incompetent.

PF has since revised their initial comment:

As for the initial claims about Monkey Island, journalist Cassandra Fairbanks looked into the story last year, and received confirmation from NIAID of the story:

The island has been managed for the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases by Charles River Laboratories, one of the largest suppliers of laboratory animals in the world, since 2007.

“The island is currently owned by the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources and leased by Charles River Laboratories, Inc., as part of a contract with NIAID. The nonhuman primates raised on Morgan Island are owned by NIAID,” NIAID confirmed in their email.

According to federal spending databases, a total of $13.5 million of a potential $27.5 million contract has been given to Charles River Laboratories to maintain the monkey island colony since March 2018. A sizable chunk of those funds, $8.9 million, was paid by Dr. Fauci’s division (NIAID) of the NIH.

No wonder PolitiFact just gave up.

Matt Palumbo is the author of The Man Behind the Curtain: Inside the Secret Network of George Soros

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