Brian — claim checks

Three claims I checked this fall. Every one had an accurate number and a false sentence around it.

A roller coaster injury story, where the defense line was “it's only 4 G.” That figure is real. But a coaster's 4 G lasts a fraction of a second and presses you into the seat, while the head-injury literature measures sustained acceleration and rotation. The number was correct and answered a question nobody asked. NEISS counts roughly 319 pediatric coaster ER visits a year in the US.

A heat death toll: 451,000 dead, sourced to real research. Real number, wrong window. Six months of that same dataset gives 239,000. Same source, half the span.

A tourism authority's US$800M. Real figure. The sentence wrapped around it was not.

That's the shape every time. The digits survive the source. The frame around them doesn't. So check the unit, the window, and what the number was measured against before you pass it on. The lie is almost never in the number.

Send me a claim you're not sure about. First check free, then $25 for a cited brief. [email protected]