Mostly true: “German CO2 emissions […] are now to be reduced, while developing countries […] may increase their emissions indefinitely.”

During a public hearing of a committee of the German parliament, Marc Bernhard of the right-wing party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) criticized the German strategy for climate protection. To his mind, reducing national CO2 emissions is not effective. In this fact check we show that Bernhard uses correct numbers but interprets them in a misleading…

Mostly true: “The probability of sleep and learning problems, depression and diabetes amongst pupils would be massively increased by a permanent changeover to summer time”

  In March 2019, the German Teachers‘ Association approved of the decision of the EU Parliament to abolish the time change. However, Heinz-Peter Meidinger, president of the association, thinks there is a health risk for students if a country switches to summer time permanently: The probability of sleeping and learning problems, depression and diabetes has…

fact checking

Mostly false: “Crime in Germany is up 10% plus since migrants were accepted“

In mid-June 2018, US president Donald Trump tweeted that the crime rate in Germany rose by more than ten percent because of the immigrants who were allowed into the country in recent years. Is this just another speculative Trump-Tweet or a disconcerting development? Since the beginning of 2017, the Federal Office for Migrants and Refugees…

Several initiatives are analysing the spread and combatting fake news.

Blog: Disinformation before the European elections – how big is the threat?

Since the controversial Facebook scandal, which was uncovered at the beginning of 2018, the topic of disinformation on the internet has become the focus of many discussions in the US election campaign. Even before the German federal election in September 2017, there were warnings to be vigilant against possible disinformation campaigns and propaganda incitement. Recently,…

Mostly true: “Asylum seekers and refugees are clearly over-represented in both sexual assaults and aggression offences”

Does crime increase with migration? German right-wing politicans like Alice Weidel of the right-wing populist party AfD says ‘yes’. The criminal statistics seem to support this claim but the number of suspected criminals is small in all population groups. This quote is an excerpt of a Facebook post Alice Weidel published on 25 March 2019.…

fact-check uncheckable

Uncheckable: “Let us be clear, while Muslims may have been the victims today, usually they are the perpetrators.”

After the attacks on mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, the Australian senator Fraser Anning has claimed that Muslims are often executors of terrorist attacks. This claim has received worldwide attention. What do the statistics say about the religious background of terrorism? The statement was published by the Australian senator Fraser Anning on the 15th of…