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 the U.S. government try to rename hamburgers to "liberty sandwiches"?

Savor Tonight claims: During WWI, the US Gov’t tried to rename hamburgers as ‘liberty sandwiches.’ I've found this claim on several other websites, too. This is definitely a case where Wikipedia fails to be a good source. It claims: During World…
Ten Bitcomb
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Does it take the average US worker in 2015 just 17 weeks of work a year to earn the average living standard of 1915?

In his TED talk "Why are there still so many jobs?", David Autor stated: The average worker in 2015 wanting to attain the average living standard in 1915 could do so by working just 17 weeks a year, one third of the time. What proves this (or…
user5341
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How much is the new Air Force One projected to cost?

President-Elect, Donald Trump recently tweeted that the cost of replacing Air Force One, the Presidents airliners would be 4 billion US dollars. This figure is reported as accurate elsewhere. Other news reports for listed a fraction of that as the…
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Has Steve Bannon expressed anti-semitic or racist views?

Multiple media sources are reporting that president-elect Trump has appointed a person with white nationalist and anti-semitic views as his chief strategist. Is it true that the appointee has expressed such views? Steve Bannon, the Breitbart News…
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Do veterans account for one in seven homeless US adults?

There seems to be a lot of attention towards unemployed/homeless military veterans in the USA. Are there any statistics or studies to show that this is some sort of pandemic, or at least unemployment/homelessness is more of a problem for ex-military…
Celeritas
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Can all new gasoline vehicles run on E85 ethanol-based fuel?

From the the documentary Pump at 1:07: NARRATOR: But what if we don't need a flex fuel car or even a kit? What if the car you drive today already contained the technology that could enable it to run on gasoline, ethanol, or methanol? What if the…
user29977
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Do the plastic shade balls in Los Angeles leach chemicals into water?

An engineer with the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power claims that the plastic balls, which are introduced into the water reservoir in an attempt to combat the severe drought, don't leach any plastic into the…
cnst
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Were Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy the only two presidents who ever attempted to end the Federal Reserve Banking Cartel?

The image below is widely circulated on Facebook: Is it true that Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy the only two presidents who ever attempted to end the Federal Reserve Banking Cartel? The definition of a Banking Cartel is given in the Wikipedia…
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Did Planned Parenthood fake being hacked?

Did Planned Parenthood fake being hacked? Example claims: Via Twitter: Their site is so hacked right now that someone has been rearranging CSS fonts and alignment. Another tweet If planned parenthood's site was hacked, why is the domain still …
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Did Madeleine Albright say that "Siberia held too many resources for Russia alone"?

I saw this quote here. Is there any evidence, which confirms or refutes that she actually said and meant (it wasn't a translation error, she didn't later dismiss the statement) it?
user18829
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Did the USA kill thousands of people between 2001 and 2013 using UAVs to inspire terror?

A few weeks ago I watched a documentation on French/German TV about UAVs (drones). In it an expert claimed that the USA used them to commit more than 1500 terror attacks in third party countries (with which they were not in war) in the Middle East…
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Deaths due to firearms in the US since Civil War

Quite a while ago I stumbled upon a data set from an official US source (or at least a very credible one) listing the detailed accounts of deaths due to firearms per year in the United States. Now, there are many sources for such data sets... The…
fgysin
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Is the declining desirability of marriage gender specific?

Of late, and perhaps it is simply the circles I wade through, I have been hearing that there is an imbalance between the decrease in the number of men who wish to get married and the number of women who want to get married. The most recent marriage…
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Does student selection by private schools negatively affect nearby public ones?

I've heard several times that the existence of private or "charter" schools near public schools in the US harms public schools specifically because it draws "stronger"(grade-wise or socioeconomically) students away. Allegedly having "stronger"…
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Did the US create and fund al-Qaeda?

There are many claims that the US created and funded the terrorist group known as "Al-Qaeda". [1] [2] [3] and so on... But how legitimate are those claims? Did the US really create al-Qaeda?
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