Skeptics Stack Exchange
Skeptics Stack Exchange

Questions tagged [united-states]

Use this tag for questions about claims based in the United States, or limited to the United States.

The United States of America (also referred to as the United States, the U.S., the USA, the States, or America) is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district.

1508 questions
22
votes
2 answers

Did the Obama administration halt processing of Iraqi refugees back in 2011?

From "Muslim ban" hypocrisy: Left quiet when Obama also halted visas by Andrew Bolt: But why was the Left silent when the Obama administration refused to issue visas to Iraqis for six months? The discovery in 2009 of two al Qaeda-Iraq terrorists…
Andrew Grimm
  • 38,859
  • 36
  • 141
  • 342
22
votes
2 answers

Does discarding the California vote numbers make Donald Trump lead the national popular vote?

"Clinton’s 2.3-million-popular-vote plurality over Trump depends on the votes in a single state: California. Clinton has more than a 4-million-vote plurality over Trump there. In the other 49 states plus the District of Columbia, Trump actually has…
LCIII
  • 2,067
  • 3
  • 17
  • 32
22
votes
1 answer

Did Secretary Clinton suggest killing Julian Assange with a drone strike?

“Can’t we just drone this guy?” Clinton openly inquired, offering a simple remedy to silence Assange and smother Wikileaks via a planned military drone strike, according to State Department…
Curious
  • 947
  • 1
  • 8
  • 18
22
votes
1 answer

Do only 49% of Americans know which country bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

From Alternet: Ignorant America: Just How Stupid Are We?, July 1, 2008 (referring to polls conducted over the past three decades): Which country dropped the nuclear bomb? Only 49% [of Americans polled] know it was their own country. Do (or did…
Andrew Grimm
  • 38,859
  • 36
  • 141
  • 342
22
votes
1 answer

Does the U.S. government spend four times as much on welfare as it would take to eliminate poverty by giving the necessary cash?

According to this article by Peter Ferrara, the U.S. spends more than four times as much on welfare as it would take to simply cut every person under the poverty line a check large enough to bring them above it. Federal and state governments spend…
Schilcote
  • 323
  • 1
  • 7
22
votes
1 answer

Did a cop get fired after stopping police abuse?

From https://twitter.com/PolicePoliceACP/status/546020531665772544 (1754 retweets, 705 favorites) Cop Stops Cop From Choking a Handcuffed Man, She Was Then Beaten/Fired Read more >> http://bit.ly/1DQqUAT #PolTwt This cop [Officer Carol Horne]…
Andrew Grimm
  • 38,859
  • 36
  • 141
  • 342
22
votes
2 answers

Were firearms prohibited in Dodge City, Kansas in the 1870s?

This image has made the rounds in various discussions of gun control in the USA. The picture was purportedly taken in Dodge City, Kansas (Popular culture's quintessential Wild West town, populated by figures such as Wyatt Earp and the setting of…
Compro01
  • 3,195
  • 1
  • 25
  • 29
22
votes
1 answer

Is a billion dollar lobbying campaign primarily responsible for opposition to climate policy?

A recent article in arstechnica reports that there is a large flow of funding from some conservative groups to a network of climate denying think tanks and lobbyists. The article Reports how work by Robert Brulle (my emphasis): shows how a network…
matt_black
  • 56,186
  • 16
  • 175
  • 373
22
votes
2 answers

Was the US nuclear missile launch code set to 00000000 for 15 years of the Cold War?

Drudge Report had a headline on 12-1-2013 that claimed that the PAL security protocol was illegally bypassed from 1962 through 1977 by setting the launch code to 00000000 on all Minuteman missiles. To give you an idea of how secure the PAL system…
Chad
  • 9,099
  • 6
  • 49
  • 96
22
votes
2 answers

Is lead exposure responsible for the rise and fall of violent crime in the US?

I just found an article titled "America's Real Criminal Element: Lead" via Hacker News that made an assertion about the cause of violent crimes that I found rather surprising. The article states that the addition and later removal of lead in…
Mad Scientist
  • 43,643
  • 20
  • 173
  • 192
22
votes
3 answers

Does United States have no technology to allow Internet voting in a secure way?

In 2011, nearly a quarter (24.3%) of participating voters in Estonia cast their ballot by remote electronic voting (that is, on their computer/phone/tablet via the Internet). Several larger countries, including the United Kingdom (63M), France…
Carlo Alterego
  • 3,963
  • 4
  • 29
  • 77
21
votes
1 answer

Are Fox News viewers more likely to believe misinformation than viewers of other news outlets?

Huffington Post writes: Fox News viewers are much more likely than others to believe false information about American politics, a new study concludes. The study, conducted by the University of Maryland, judged how likely consumers of various news…
user1873
  • 8,931
  • 42
  • 81
21
votes
5 answers

"The [US] budget explained in simple English"

I've seen this image doing the rounds on Facebook, etc: I'm dubious out these figures. Is this an over-simplification? Can you use those figures in the same calculation?
Dave Hillier
  • 1,514
  • 1
  • 14
  • 33
21
votes
2 answers

Are more people accidentally killed by doctors than accidentally killed by guns and traffic combined?

The actual claim is something like this The top five causes of death in the United States, in order, are tobacco, alcohol, medical malpractice, traffic and firearms. According to JAMA, doctors kill more people than auto accidents and…
TheTechGuy
  • 2,772
  • 6
  • 26
  • 37
21
votes
1 answer

Is the U.S. 90th in the world in terms of women in national legislatures?

The Miss Representation Extended Trailer makes the claim, at 6:03: The U.S. is the 90th in the world in terms of women in national legislatures. The voice-over adds: If people knew that Cuba, China, Iraq and Afghanistan have more women in…
Flimzy
  • 15,520
  • 14
  • 63
  • 132
1 2 3
…
99 100