FactCheck.org’s SciCheck feature focuses exclusively on false and misleading scientific claims that are made by partisans to influence public policy. It was launched in January 2015 with a grant from the Stanton Foundation. The foundation was founded by the late Frank Stanton, president of CBS for 25 years, from 1946 to 1971.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., head of the Department of Health and Human Services, downplayed the seriousness of an ongoing measles outbreak in Texas, falsely claiming that people had been hospitalized “mainly for quarantine” and misleadingly stating that the situation is “not unusual.” The Texas outbreak is already larger than any single outbreak last year and has led to the first measles death in the U.S. since 2015.
In Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s first interview as secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, he made multiple incorrect or misleading statements, including about seed oils, an abortion drug and the notion that the U.S. has the “sickest population in the world.”
Here, we explain the facts behind several more of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s claims during his two Senate hearings as nominee for Health and Human Services secretary.
On his first day in the Oval Office, President Donald Trump signed an executive order that attempts to slow the growth in the country’s wind generation capacity. We’ll explain what the order did and what Trump has said about wind energy.
In his second day of confirmation hearings, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, refused to say that vaccines do not cause autism — despite a large body of evidence showing there is no link. He also pointed to a flawed paper to suggest that there is credible evidence to claim vaccines cause the disorder.
As part of a rash of executive orders completed on his first day back in the White House, President Donald Trump began the nation’s exit from the World Health Organization. Here, we explain how the withdrawal would work and what it would mean, both domestically and abroad. We also fact-check the president on his claims about WHO funding.
In his first Senate confirmation hearing to be secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. repeated claims we have written about before on vaccines and chronic disease.
We explain what’s known about how the catastrophic L.A. wildfires started and the factors that scientists do — and don’t — think contributed.
We reviewed what each of President-elect Donald Trump’s presumptive nominees to lead the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of the Interior and the Department of Energy have said about climate change and the environment.
Fox News health commentator Dr. Kelly Powers was diagnosed with glioblastoma, an aggressive form of brain cancer, in July 2020, months before COVID-19 vaccines were made available in the U.S. But social media posts are baselessly linking her death on Dec. 4 to the vaccines. There is no evidence that the vaccines cause or worsen cancer.