Skeptics Stack Exchange
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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.

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Did Ivana Trump claim under oath that she had been raped by Donald Trump?

The New Yorker article "Documenting Trump's Abuse of Women" (24 October 2016) recounts Trump biographer Harry Hurt III's claim that Ivana Trump said in a sworn deposition she had been raped by Donald Trump: The part of the book that caused the most…
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Do gun homicides and suicides kill more Americans than war?

In a 2015 column in the New York Times by Nicholas Kristof, the following two claims are made: More Americans die in gun homicides and suicides every six months than have died in the last 25 years in every terrorist attack and the wars in…
TheEnvironmentalist
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Is this "whites killed by whites" diagram wrong?

I found the following diagram on twitter: (Sorry for not giving the source: I don't know how to link there.) The diagram gives the impression that if you're a white person (in USA), then you're about equally likely to be murdered by a black person…
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Has the synthetic bacteria Synthia become a rogue flesh-eating disease?

I spotted this on Facebook: Cynthia [sic]: Flesh-Eating Synthetic Bacteria that has Gone Wild In 2011, Cynthia was unleashed in the Gulf of Mexico and in its initial stages of life it was absorbing oil slicks at breathtaking speed. In January, 2011…
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Did the U.S. sign a treaty with another government about the legality of a single coin?

On the Wikipedia page about the golden $20 double eagle coin, there is the following sentence: This piece is unique as the only 1933 double eagle the U.S. government has deemed legal for its citizens to own (having been negotiated as such through…
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Is ISIS committing genocide against the Yazidis?

From Fact Checks of the Eighth Republican Debate, on the New York Times website: Senator Marco Rubio said President Obama had played down the threat of the Islamic State, which practices genocide. An exaggeration. Senator Marco Rubio's charge…
Andrew Grimm
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Did a US Navy ship demand that a lighthouse get out of its path, thinking it was another ship?

I've known for some time the joke about the American military ship insisting that another ship moves out of their way just to discover it was a lighthouse. I've always thought it was simply a joke, but today this video appeared in my Facebook feed.…
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Do one third of American 8th graders think that Canada is run by a dictatorship?

According to this article in the National Post 33% of American 8th graders believe that Canada is run by a dictatorship: In recent results from the U.S. National Assessment of Educational Progress — billed as the Nation’s Report Card — fully 33 per…
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How fully-informed was President George W Bush about CIA interrogation techniques?

BBC, in a piece detailing an interview with former Vice President Dick Cheny on Fox News, quotes the former statesman as saying that Bush was "Fully-Informed" on the techniques: Former US President George W Bush was "fully informed" about CIA…
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Did the U.S. government have prior knowledge of 9/11?

This has been said a lot of times in lots of places. Did the US government know about the attacks prior to the attacks, and were they involved with the attacks?
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Is there a coffee shop called "Dumb Starbucks"?

This claim originated on 89.3 KPCC. Is there really a "Dumb Starbucks" shop in existence? And, is what they're doing legal under "Parody Law"?
Evan Carroll
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Does the US army use unlicensed copies of Windows 7?

I saw this claim at TorrentFreak: However, a signal soldier serving in Qatar informs TorrentFreak that this incident may not be as unique as it sounds. According to the soldier, who we will name Mark, the soldiers’ education center at his base has…
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Are SWATs in the US mostly used for serving marijuana warrants?

I've seen following claims made by pro-legalization lobby: SWATs are used more often for drug warrants than to deal with any violent crimes most of these warrants are for marijuana significant number of people are killed during these SWAT…
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Do Europeans have a greater chance of making it into the top 1% of income earners than Americans?

In a 2011 Vanity Fair article, Nobel-Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz wrote: America has long prided itself on being a fair society, where everyone has an equal chance of getting ahead, but the statistics suggest otherwise: the chances of a…
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Is it more expensive to employ a smoker than a non-smoker?

DN.se Det kostar nära 6.000 dollar (knappt 40.000 kronor) mer per år att ha en rökare anställd än någon som inte röker, visar en studie i USA. Skälet är rökares större sjukfrånvaro, dyrare hälsovård och lägre produktivitet på grund av…
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