Are “fact-checks” checking facts or checking narratives?

In recent years, social media platforms and media outlets have been using “independent fact-checkers” to label content as “misinformation” or not. But, what happens when the fact-checkers get it wrong?

In August 2021, a journalist, Alex Newman, reported on two different scientific assessments of climate change that were published around the same time. He interviewed authors from both reports and other scientists and reported on their different scientific opinions on this important scientific topic. However, after his article started to go viral on social media, one of Facebook’s “independent fact-checkers”, Climate Feedback, claimed it was “Incorrect” and “Misleading”.

Was Climate Feedback carrying out a genuine “fact-check” or were they just doing a “narrative-check”? Here, Dr. Willie Soon, a co-author of one of the scientific assessments that Alex Newman was reporting on, gives his opinion.

Clip taken from Dr. Willie Soon’s April 11, 2022 talk at Hillsdale College in D.C., “The Weaponization of Science: Politics, Vilification, and the Climate Debate”.
For a link to the full talk (1:07:12), see https://vimeo.com/710864737/c408cafffe (slides available here: https://tinyurl.com/48n6tkmw)

Relevant links:
🔹 Alex Newman’s Epoch Times article: https://www.theepochtimes.com/challenging-un-study-finds-sun-not-co2-may-be-behind-global-warming_3950089.html
🔹 Climate Feedback’s “fact-check” of Alex Newman: https://climatefeedback.org/claimreview/solar-forcing-is-not-the-main-cause-of-current-global-warming-contrary-to-claim-by-alex-newman-in-the-epoch-times/
🔹 CERES’ “fact-check fact-check” of Climate Feedback: https://www.ceres-science.com/post/open-letter-a-recent-climate-feedback-fact-check-article-makes-multiple-false-and-misleading-clai
🔹 Dr. Willie Soon and Dr. Ronan Connolly’s response in Epoch Times: https://www.theepochtimes.com/fact-checks-by-non-experts-are-shutting-down-genuine-scientific-inquiry_4008914.html

The two scientific assessments that Alex Newman was comparing:
⭐ 1. The Connolly et al. (2021) peer-reviewed paper: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1674-4527/21/6/131
⭐ 2. The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)’s Working Group 1 6th Assessment Report (2021): https://www.ipcc.ch/report/sixth-assessment-report-working-group-i/

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🚩 Disclaimer: Some of the scientific opinions expressed in this video disagree with those of the latest UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports and several other scientific bodies.

The current policies of many social media platforms emphasize that when providing educational, documentary, scientific or artistic content discussing climate change, context for any such disagreements should be provided.

For such context:
🔹 Youtube recommends www.un.org/en/climatechange/what-is-climate-change
🔹 Facebook recommends www.facebook.com/hubs/climate_science_information_center
🔹 Alternatively, to view the latest IPCC reports, visit www.ipcc.ch