Most misinformation isn't a lie made from nothing. It's usually a real study, a real hearing, or a real quote — with something added, dropped, or bent on the way to your feed. That seam is where this page lives. Every entry below shows you what the source actually says next to what the claim says it says, so you can check the difference yourself instead of taking anyone's word for it, including ours.
Recent claims checked against their sources
"The Rise of Collective Stupidity"
A viral video on attention, IQ decline, and misinformation cites real research — mostly accurately. One study gets stretched past what it actually found.
Mostly holds, one overreach → Case 002 · VideoThe Patel "Fifth Amendment" video
A viral video claims Kash Patel took the Fifth over "47 protected names" in the Epstein files. It's invented — here's the real hearing, on the record.
Fabricated, real record included →Coming soon
Have a video, post, or clip you want checked? That's the raw material this whole page runs on.
The studies that keep getting cited — and what they actually found
These pages don't change when a new video comes out. They're the fixed reference points every case links back to, so the sourcing only has to be built once.
The Norway IQ reversal
730,000 conscripts, decades of data, and a decline that shows up between brothers in the same house. What the 2018 PNAS paper actually concluded — and what it didn't.
Bratsberg & Rogeberg, PNAS 2018 → Study · MisinformationWhy false news outruns the truth
126,000 stories, 3 million people, 11 years of Twitter data. Falsehood spread faster — and it wasn't bots doing it.
Vosoughi, Roy & Aral, Science 2018 → Study · ReasoningWhy being smart doesn't protect you
Sharper math skills made partisan errors worse, not better — but a later, larger replication couldn't reproduce the effect. Both results matter.
Kahan et al., 2013/2017 → Study · Social PsychologyWhat it takes to move a room
Two people, calling blue slides green, consistently, shifted a group's answers — and their private judgment, even after the room broke up.
Moscovici, Lage & Naffrechoux, 1969 →"The lie is fresher, and the network pays for fresh." — on why falsehood outpaces correction; see Case 001
None of this is about being cynical toward every claim you see, or trusting nothing. It's the opposite: most of what circulates is built from something real. The habit worth building isn't suspicion — it's the two-minute pause to find out whether the thing you're about to share is the study, or something standing on the study's shoulders wearing its coat.