Take a look at the things that didn’t go according to plan this week
This roundup includes some of the most viral but untrue visuals and stories of the week. Despite being shared on social media, none of these stories are true. They were checked by the Associated Press. These are the facts:
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Temperature graph misrepresented to deny climate change
CLAIM. A graph by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration showing land and ocean temperatures over eight years proves that global warming due to carbon emissions is a hoax.
THE FACTS It is a larger graph that shows temperature trends over 140 years. This graph also shows a dramatic upward trend. Social media users misrepresented the graph to support the erroneous claim that global temperatures are falling rather than rising, meaning global warming is “a hoax.” The graph being shared online appears to show a slight downward trend, with a note saying the overall temperature decreased 0.11 degrees Celsius during the 2015-2022 period. “The 8-year temperature time series shows the annual global mean surface temperatures for the most recent eight years,” said Jeffrey Hicke, a professor at the University of Idaho’s Department of Earth And Spatial Sciences. “It is accurate as shown, but is misleading.” That’s because while the last eight years trended slightly downward, this small period of time was greatly impacted by natural El Niño and La Niña cycles, experts explained. This zooming in does not invalidate the global upward trend of temperatures over the last century. The full NOAA graph, This graph shows temperature trends between 1880 and 2022. It also shows an increase in global average temperatures. Hicke said the graph in its full context is “much more appropriate for assessing the influence of human activities on climate.” NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information said in a statement that although the climate is warming, it is also subject to natural variability as it is impacted by weather events such as El Niños and La Niñas. El Niños bring unusually warm temperatures across the central and eastern tropical Pacific Ocean, while La Niñas bring unusually cool temperatures. During El Niños, global temperatures tend to be warmer than in years when La Niñas were present. In its statement, NOAA said that 2015-2016 experienced a strong El Niño, which helped boost global temperatures to record highs. But since then, about three La Niñas have helped slightly cool global temperatures. “The selected timeframe from 2016-2022 can create the appearance of a cooling trend,” the agency said, adding, “this is why when computing trends we use timescales of at least 10 years.” John Knox, a professor at the University of Georgia’s Geography Department who studies the dynamics of weather and climate, said the claim in the tweet “is a classic example of cherry-picking the end points of a time series to seemingly prove a false point.” “It’s a very short period of time, which reduces the statistical significance of claims of a trend,” he wrote in an email, adding, “The rising temperature trend over the decades is obvious.”
— Associated Press writer Sophia Tulp in New York contributed this report.
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Harvard med school class isn’t about ‘trans infants’
CLAIM: Harvard Medical School’s class teaches students how to treat transgender babies.
FACTS: This elective course covers health care for LGBTQ patients and lasts for a month. Only one day focuses on infants and it does not cover their gender identity or sexual orientation, the class’s professor told The Associated Press. Recently, online commentators and conservative websites have altered the content of the class. Many social media users have called it an extreme example in gender-affirming care. “Harvard is teaching medical students about transgender infants,” wrote one Twitter user, whose post had gained almost 10,000 likes as of Tuesday. These claims are false. The class actually teaches infants. The course — titled “Caring for Patients with Diverse Sexual Orientations, Gender Identities, and Sex Development” — teaches only about the physical development of babies who are born intersex, according to Dr. Alex Keuroghlian, the associate professor who teaches the class. The term intersex describes people born with reproductive organs, hormones or other traits that don’t fit typical definitions of male or female. These conditions can be or may not be apparent at birth, according to Dr. Arlene Barratz, the medical and research affairs coordination for InterConnect, an intersex advocacy group. A transgender person is someone whose gender identity — whether they feel like a girl, boy, neither or both — differs from the gender they were assigned at birth. Transgender does not mean intersex. Parents and families of intersex children “have questions about health implications of these physical variations,” Keuroghlian told the AP. “Medical students need to know how to provide this care.” As part of the course, students also study how to care for non-infant patients and focus on disciplines such as psychiatry, endocrinology, dermatology and infectious disease. Physical differences in an intersex infant’s genitals “can be obvious in a newborn and usually triggers a cascade of medical attention including an evaluation to discover the underlying cause,” Baratz said in an email. Sean Saifa Wall, a co-founder of the Intersex Justice Project, said that an infant’s physical sex characteristics are apparent long before they have a sense of what gender is, or which gender they feel like. He said conservative critics were “purposefully conflating” the two. Older children who experience gender dysphoria — feelings of distress about their assigned gender — may seek out transition-related health care to relieve those feelings once they’ve reached puberty. However, hormones and surgeries are available. are not given to young children Despite misleading rhetoric, this is the best way to use infants.
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CNN didn’t publish story linking Damar Hamlin collapse to vaccine
CLAIM: Image shows that CNN published a Jan. 11 headline reading, “Doctor of Damar Hamlin confirms Cardiac Arrest was due to the 4th Booster Vaccine.”
THE FACTS The headline actually reported on the release by a hospital of the safety of the Buffalo Bills. The manipulated image is spreading via social media. unsupported claims that Hamlin’s cardiac arrest was caused by a COVID-19 vaccine. “Doctor of Damar Hamlin confirms Cardiac Arrest was due to the 4th Booster Vaccine,” the purported headline shows. The image depicts a story that was published on January 11th at 1:37 p.m. Eastern. Others on social media claimed that CNN had reported similar information, although they didn’t have the image. But a search of CNN’s website shows the screenshot was manipulated to change the headline on a different story. The real headline — published at that time, by the same reporters, using the same photo of Hamlin — actually reads: “Damar Hamlin discharged after spending more than a week hospitalized due to a cardiac arrest.” CNN spokesperson Emily Kuhn also confirmed in an email to The Associated Press that the screenshot was fabricated and that CNN did not publish the headline in question. Social media users shared a screenshot from a questionable account that showed a tweet in which someone claimed to have been a doctor. The tweet stated that Bills player Dmar Hamlin had received a COVID-19 boost on Dec. 26, the day before he died in Cincinnati’s Jan. 2. game. This account has been removed and there is no evidence to support the claim that it was Hamlin’s doctor. The Bills and a Buffalo doctor who led Hamlin’s care team announced his Jan. 11 discharge He was taken to a Buffalo hospital, but he did not reveal the results of the tests that were performed to find the cause of his heart failure. The NFL player’s collapse gave renewed energy to a faulty narrative Young athletes are experiencing a sharp rise in cardiac problems due to vaccines. According to cardiologists, athletes have experienced sudden cardiac death and cardiac arrest well before the COVID-19 epidemic. However, they have not witnessed the spike in claims made on social media.
— Associated Press writer Angelo Fichera in Philadelphia contributed this report.
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Video of Austrian reporter collapsing predates pandemic
CLAIM: This video shows an Austrian newscaster collapsing on-air after side effects of the COVID-19 vaccination.
FACTS. The video that captures Rosa Lyon, Austrian Broadcasting Corporation reporter was recorded on Sept. 24, 2019, long before the pandemic and before COVID-19 shots were invented. Social media users have been linking the 2019 clip of Lyon’s collapse to the vaccine for months, and the claim resurfaced online this week. The dramatic footage shows the reporter sitting behind a desk as she presents for the show “Zeit im Bild,” when she suddenly falls backwards. “THEY’RE DROPPING LIKE FLIES,” an Instagram user who posted the video on Tuesday wrote. One user commented under the post that the video showed a reaction caused by “VAIDS,” short for vaccine acquired immunodeficiency syndrome. The Associated Press previously reported that VAIDS isn’t a real condition and that COVID-19 vaccines don’t cause a similar syndrome. The clip of Lyon was also featured in anti-vaccine film “Died Suddenly.” The film, which premiered in November, pushes several debunked vaccine claims, along with videos of people collapsing that have no link to the vaccine. Austrian Broadcasting Corporation spokeswoman Michael Krause told the AP by email that the incident happened in September 2019. “There is absolutely no connection to Corona,” he wrote.
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Old video of Russian plane in flames circulates after Nepal crash
CLAIM! A video showing the Sunday plane crash in Pokhara (Nepal), which resulted in the deaths of all 72 passengers.
FACTS But, it was shared by social media users as a fake. Yeti Airlines flight 691Which? crashed Sunday after a 27-minute trip from Kathmandu, just before landing in Nepal’s tourist city of Pokhara. Video of the plane flying over forested terrain, caught fire, and then plummeting into trees below was widely shared in English and Spanish. “Plane crash in Nepal, crazy how it’s hard to survive this,” read one tweet with the video. The footage was found to show the 2021 accident of a prototype military transport aircraft that was flying outside Moscow. The plane crashed in a forested area as it was coming in for a landing at the Kubinka airfield 45 kilometers (28 miles) west of Moscow, killing all three crew members on board, Russia’s United Aircraft Corporation told the Tass news agency. An August 2021 AP report on that crash Includes screenshots of the video as well as notes from Dmitry Ovchinnikov. The recent crash of the much-larger twin-engine ATR 72 aircraft in Nepal was the country’s deadliest air disaster in 30 years. It’s still not clear what caused the crash.
— Associated Press writer Abril Mulato in Mexico City contributed this report with additional reporting from Ali Swenson in New York.
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