url stringlengths 71 223 | verdict stringclasses 47
values | source stringlengths 20 251 | claim stringlengths 26 366 ⌀ | headline stringlengths 16 135 ⌀ | verdict_detail stringlengths 103 1.13k ⌀ | key_takeaway stringlengths 107 786 ⌀ | full_claim stringlengths 47 670 ⌀ | references stringlengths 149 6.82k ⌀ | review stringlengths 1.32k 61.1k |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
https://science.feedback.org/review/pyramid-shaped-peaks-antarctica-naturally-carved-by-glaciers-not-constructed-by-ancient-civilization/ | Inaccurate | Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, X/Twitter, 2024-03-20 | Ancient civilizations once inhabited Antarctica, as shown by the pyramids there, but the continent’s position and climate rapidly changed due to ‘tectonics and pole shift’. | null | Factually inaccurate: There is no evidence of ancient civilizations or pyramids in Antarctica. The pyramid-shaped landform shown in recent social media videos is called a ‘horn’ or ‘pyramidal peak’ and forms naturally as glaciers carve (i.e., erode) different rock faces. There is also no evidence for a rapid shift in t... | The rocky pyramid-shaped feature in Antarctica is a natural landform called a ‘horn’ or ‘pyramidal peak’. These peaks form when three or four intersecting glaciers carve out mountain faces in different directions, thus making a horn or pyramidal shape. They are common in Antarctica and found in many other places on Ear... | Thawing ice in Antarctica is revealing pyramids and other remnants of an ancient civilization. Antarctica quickly moved across Earth into its current position through plate tectonics and pole shift, causing Antarctica’s surface to flash-freeze. | 1- Hess (2016) McKnight’s Physical Geography: A Landscape Appreciation. 2 – Sugden et al. (2017) The million-year evolution of the glacial trimline in the southernmost Ellsworth Mountains, Antarctica. Earth and Planetary Science Letters. 3 – Palin and Santosh (2021) Plate tectonics: What, where, why, and when?. Gondwan... | On 20 March 2024, a video on YouTube claimed that ‘Antarctica has pyramids from an ancient civilization’, and that ‘the continent’s surface flash-froze as it rapidly shifted on Earth‘. This video has gathered over 3.4 million views, and in recent months it has been clipped and shared on TikTok, Facebook, and X/Twitter.... |
https://science.feedback.org/review/sea-levels-have-risen-for-over-100-years-despite-misleading-photos-social-media/ | Inaccurate | Facebook, 2024-06-06 | Sea-level rise is not occurring or showing any impacts, based on photographic evidence. | null | Inaccurate: Scientific evidence unambiguously shows rising sea levels based on measurements of global mean sea level and tidal gauge data, even the ones collected near the locations from social media posts claiming that ‘sea level is not rising’. Misleading: It is misleading to show ‘before and after’ photos from selec... | Scientists have shown that global mean sea level has risen since the year 1880 by analyzing sea-level data from tidal gauges and satellites. Relative sea level rise – which is measured at a local or regional scale – can vary due to Earth’s shape and ocean dynamics. However, the data collected from the locations shown i... | There is no evidence of sea-level rise in before and after photos (i.e., from the past and present) from some locations. Therefore, sea-level rise is not occurring or causing negative impacts. | 1 – Church et al. (2011) Sea-level rise from the late 19th to the early 21st Century. Surveys in Geophysics. 2 – Rovere et al. (2016) Eustatic and Relative Sea Level Changes. Current Climate Change Reports. 3 – Slangen et al. (2016) Anthropogenic forcing dominates global mean sea-level rise since 1970. Nature Climate C... | Several social media posts have gone viral after sharing ‘before and after’ photos from the past and present to claim that sea-level rise has not occurred. For example, a number of these posts show photos of Sugarloaf Mountain in Brazil, labeled with the years 1880, 1910, and 2020 and captions claiming that sea level i... |
https://science.feedback.org/review/colorful-auroras-seen-may-2024-caused-by-mass-ejections-from-sun-not-haarp-experiments/ | Incorrect | Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, X/Twitter, 2024-05-11 | May 2024 auroras were caused by experiments from High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP) experiments | null | The origin of auroras in Earth’s atmosphere is well-studied and occur as solar winds and ejections of magnetized plasma from the Sun approach Earth and interact with our planet’s magnetic field. HAARP is incapable of producing the auroras that were observed because their power output is orders of magnitude less than wo... | The High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP) is a research facility that uses a high-power, high-frequency transmitter to study the physical properties and behavior of the highest point of the atmosphere, the ionosphere. Radio transmissions from HAARP only cause small effects in the ionosphere that last f... | The vivid lights seen around the world on May 10 2024 were artificial aurora effects caused by High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP) experiments, not by a geomagnetic storm. | 1 – McCoy et al. (2018) Haarp, a Powerful Active Ionospheric Laboratory Open for International Research. 42nd COSPAR Scientific Assembly. 14-22 July 2018, Pasadena, California, USA 2 – Todd Pedersen (2015) HAARP, the most powerful ionosphere heater on Earth. Physics Today. 3– Inan et al. (2004) Multi‐hop whistler‐mode ... | On 10 May 2024, solar eruptions caused a several-day geomagnetic storm on Earth, causing a vivid display of colors, called auroras, which were witnessed in skies around the globe. This natural event coincided with experiments by the High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP), which triggered dozens of socia... |
https://science.feedback.org/review/no-evidence-significant-influence-volcanoes-solar-variability-on-recent-climate-change-contrary-judith-curry-claims-prageru-video/ | Misleading | PragerU, Judith Curry, 2024-04-15 | Climate scientists disagree about how much warming is associated with our emissions and whether this warming is larger than natural climate variability from the sun and volcanic eruptions | null | Misleading: Climate scientists have studied natural climate variability and the contribution of human CO2 emissions to recent climate changes. The resulting evidence unequivocally shows that anthropogenic CO2 emissions are the most significant driver of recent climate change, while natural variability has made a minima... | Scientific evidence shows that modern global warming is primarily driven by increasing CO2 emissions from human activities. There is no evidence that solar variations or volcanic activity are substantial drivers of recent climate change. | Climate scientists disagree about how much warming is associated with our emissions and whether this warming is larger than natural climate variability; “Variations in the sun and volcanic eruptions also have a substantial impact [on Earth’s climate], but these are simply unpredictable”. | 1 – IPCC (2021). Sixth Assessment Report. 2 – Zhong and Haigh (2013) The greenhouse effect and carbon dioxide. Royal Meteorological Society Weather. 3 – PAGES 2K Consortium (2019) Consistent multidecadal variability in global temperature reconstructions and simulations over the Common Era. Nature Geoscience. 4 – Le Qué... | On 15 April 2024, PragerU posted a short video on their website and YouTube titled “The Good News about Climate Change”, which gathered over 500,000 views combined as of the publication date of this review. The video features a former professor, Dr. Judith Curry, who makes claims about the current state of climate chan... |
https://science.feedback.org/review/carbon-isotopes-do-not-show-humans-climate-impacts-too-small-notice-despite-the-daily-sceptic-inaccurate-claim/ | Incorrect | Daily Sceptic, Chris Morrison, 2024-04-08 | Human-caused carbon emissions’ effect on climate is ‘non-discernible’. Measurements of carbon isotope ratios in atmospheric CO2 indicate that it is the recent expansion of a more productive biosphere that has led to increased CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere. | null | Incorrect: Scientific studies demonstrate that fossil fuel emissions are the only cause that can explain both changes in carbon isotope ratios and increased CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere. Cherry-picking: The article supports its claim with only two papers while ignoring the vast body of existing evidence that di... | Carbon isotope ratios are actually one of the key measurements that show human-caused emissions are responsible for climate change. CO2 emissions from fossil fuels have lower concentrations of both carbon-13 and carbon-14 than CO2 placed in the atmosphere by the natural carbon cycle. Therefore, burning fossil fuels is ... | “Human-caused carbon emissions’ effect on climate is ‘non-discernible’. Measurements of carbon isotope ratios in atmospheric CO2 indicate that it is the recent expansion of a more productive biosphere that has led to increased CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere.” | 1 – Graven et al. (2020) Changes to Carbon Isotopes in Atmospheric CO2 Over the Industrial Era and Into the Future. Global Biogeochemical Cycles. 2 – Hoffman and Rasmussen (2022) Absolute Carbon Stable Isotope Ratio in the Vienna Peedee Belemnite Isotope Reference Determined by 1H NMR Spectroscopy. Analytical Chemistry... | Carbon comes in three naturally occurring isotopes on Earth: carbon-12, carbon-13, and carbon-14. Different carbon sources bear different mixtures of the three, and studying these isotopic signatures can help trace how carbon moves across the Earth. For instance, carbon-13 and carbon-14 are less abundant in fossil fuel... |
https://science.feedback.org/review/data-shows-temperatures-rising-greenland-world-current-global-warming-driven-co2-not-solar-activity/ | Inaccurate | Daily Sceptic, Stephen Andrews, 2024-03-08 | Ice cores from Greenland show no significant warming, casting doubt on the climate change theory | null | Factually inaccurate: The claim that there is no global warming signal from Greenland is in direct contradiction with available observations. Recent studies of ice cores from several locations in Greenland have shown that temperatures are warming faster than the natural variation of the last 1000 years. Rising temperat... | The effect of atmospheric CO2 concentrations on global temperatures is well established; as concentrations rise, global warming increases through the greenhouse effect. Scientific studies show that modern global warming is primarily driven by increasing CO2 emissions from human activities. Based on the available scient... | Ice cores from Greenland show no significant warming, casting doubt on the climate change theory; above a certain concentration of carbon dioxide, it has minimal direct impact on global temperature relative to solar cycles. | 1 – Anderegg et al. (2010) Expert credibility in climate change. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 2 – Markle and Steig (2022) Improving temperature reconstructions from ice-core water-isotope records. Climate of the Past. 3 – Holme et al. (2019) Varying regional δ18O–temperature relationship in high-res... | The consensus among climate scientists is that modern global warming is primarily driven by increases in atmospheric CO2 from human activities[1]. A major component of studying global warming is comparing present conditions with those of the past. However, taken out of context, these data can be misinterpreted to draw ... |
https://science.feedback.org/review/arctic-sea-ice-melting-over-past-decades-with-projections-summer-ice-free-conditions-mid-century/ | Incorrect | The Epoch Times, Allan Astrup Jensen, 2024-02-06 | Arctic sea ice is not melting and there is no indication that we should expect the Arctic sea summer ice to disappear completely, as predicted | null | Incorrect: Overall, Arctic sea ice extent and volume have been decreasing since the 1970s, a trend that scientists largely attribute to human-induced global warming. The author of the claim cherry-picks short term fluctuations due to natural variability to suggest otherwise. Scientists forecast the first ice-free summe... | Despite short-term fluctuations due to natural variability, the Arctic sea ice extent and volume has decreased over the past few decades. Scientists have established that this decrease is mostly the result of global warming due to human emissions of greenhouse gasses. | Arctic sea ice is not melting. There is no indication that we should expect the Arctic Sea summer ice to disappear completely, as predicted. CO2 levels don't drive Arctic sea ice decline. | 1 – IPCC (2021) Ocean, Cryosphere and Sea Level Change. In Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis. Contributions of Working Group I to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. 2 – Walsh et al. (2017) A database for depicting Arctic sea ice variations back to 1850. Geographi... | Since the 1970s, satellites have been providing accurate measurements of sea ice extent in the Arctic, revealing a steady reduction in its surface. The yearly extent of Arctic sea ice that survives the entire summer has decreased by approximately 50% from 1979 to 2020 compared to its average extent during the period fr... |
https://science.feedback.org/review/optimal-atmospheric-co2-dinosaurs-plants-harmful-humans-current-concentration-higher-homo-sapiens-ever-experienced/ | Misleading | Bright Insight, Jimmy Corsetti, 2024-02-04 | High CO2 was fine for the dinosaurs and high CO2 benefits plants today in greenhouses, so more CO2 can’t be bad for humans | null | Flawed reasoning: The fact that elevated atmospheric-CO2 benefited the dinosaurs and benefits plants today does not mean it also benefits humans. In fact, there are potential human health risks from prolonged exposure to the optimal CO2 levels for dinosaurs and plants, in addition to the multiple negative environmental... | Elevated atmospheric-CO2 from human emissions enhances the greenhouse effect, which causes global warming and results in several other significant negative impacts on the ecosystems and natural processes on which humans depend. Plants and animals have different tolerances and responses to elevated CO2, and concentratio... | Increasing carbon dioxide (CO2) is not bad for humans because it was much higher during the time of the dinosaurs and they were unaffected. High carbon dioxide also benefits plant growth, which is why CO2 is pumped into greenhouses to boost crop yields. Levels of CO2 are so low right now in comparison to the levels tha... | 1 – Morris et al. (2018) The timescale of early land plant evolution. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 2 – Foster et al. (2017) Future climate forcing potentially without precedent in the last 420 million years. Nature Communications. 3 – Rae et al. (2021) Atmospheric CO2 over the past 66 million years ... | During Earth’s 4.5 billion year history, the atmosphere has undergone dramatic changes and only started to appear like it does today around 290 million years ago (mya). Today’s air is composed of several gasses with different concentrations, like nitrogen (78.08%), oxygen (20.95%), argon (0.93%), and carbon dioxide (0.... |
https://science.feedback.org/review/study-calls-people-grow-their-own-food-years-come-despite-finding-higher-carbon-footprint-compared-conventional-agriculture/ | Misleading | Facebook, The Atlas Society, Social media users, 2024-01-26 | Study and headline saying homegrown food is more carbon intensive than conventional agriculture is meant to discourage and stop people from growing their own food | null | Misrepresents source: New study which quantified a higher carbon footprint of urban agriculture compared to conventional agriculture does not discourage or call for people to stop growing their own food. On the contrary, the study proposed multiple solutions to reduce carbon emissions and calls for maintaining and supp... | Although low-tech urban agriculture is expected to be a central component of sustainable cities in the future due to its many social, ecological, and nutritional benefits, new research demonstrates it is not necessarily less carbon intensive than conventional agriculture as commonly assumed. Scientists in general not o... | New study and article headline saying homegrown food is worse for the climate than conventional agriculture is ridiculous propaganda meant to discourage and ultimately ban people from growing their own food. Growing your own food in your garden will soon be prohibited in the name of climate change because they say it i... | 1 – Nicholls et al. (2020) The contribution of small-scale food production in urban areas to the sustainable development goals: A review and case study. Sustainability Science. 2 – Lee et al. (2015) Greenhouse gas emission reduction effect in the transportation sector by urban agriculture in Seoul, Korea. Landscape and... | To meet global food challenges, such as increases in overall food demand alongside decreases in the natural resources needed for food production, urban agriculture is expected to play a critical role in the coming decades[1]. Because of the significant potential for transport carbon emissions reductions when food is gr... |
https://science.feedback.org/review/us-proposed-bills-hearings-dont-confirm-chemtrails-exist-not-geoengineering-strategy/ | Inaccurate | Facebook, YouTube, Social media users, 2024-01-12 | US state governments are banning chemtrails, confirming secret government programs using chemtrails for various purposes that harm the public and the environment | null | Factually Inaccurate: No US state government has passed laws banning chemtrails, which remain unproven and not supported by any scientific evidence. US congressional documents have been misattributed and misinterpreted as admissions of chemtrail existence. Proposed bills, citizen petitions, and committee geoengineering... | Contrails are trails of condensing water vapor left in the wake of airplanes. They do not contain harmful chemicals as proposed by "chemtrail" conspiracy theories, which are not supported by any evidence. Although some politicians have proposed bills to ban chemtrails or related conspiratorial concepts, they are not ev... | There are secret government programs using chemtrails for various purposes that harm the public and the environment. This is confirmed by New Hampshire and Texas state governments referencing and forbidding chemtrails, and a Tennessee government hearing on the development of geoengineering projects like stratospheric a... | 1 – Shearer et al. (2016) Quantifying expert consensus against the existence of a secret, large-scale atmospheric spraying program. Environmental Research Letters. 2 – Burns et al. (2016) What do people think when they think about solar geoengineering? A review of empirical social science literature, and prospects for ... | There is no credible, scientific evidence that chemtrails exist and are distinct from contrails. Claims that chemtrails exist have been addressed multiple times previously on Science Feedback (e.g., here). Yet, on 12 Jan. 2024, social media user “OFF GRID with DOUG and STACY” (701 thousand Facebook followers, 1.19 mill... |
https://science.feedback.org/review/evidence-greenhouse-gasses-cause-global-warming-denied-willie-soon-tucker-carlson-interview-mass-social-media-climate-misinformation/ | Incorrect | Tucker Carlson Network, Willie Soon, 2024-01-09 | Carbon dioxide does not cause global warming, scientists are 90% sure it’s the Sun; The climate problems blamed on carbon dioxide (such as ocean acidification and negative impacts on polar bears) are not real | null | Incorrect: The hypothesis that the Sun is responsible for climate change is inconsistent with real-world observations. Scientific consensus based on overwhelming evidence shows that greenhouse gasses like carbon dioxide are the main cause of current global warming, beyond reasonable doubt. Inaccurate: Elevated atmosphe... | The causes of climate change and global warming are well-known among the international scientific community. Scientific consensus based on overwhelming evidence, beyond reasonable doubt, shows that anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions are the main driver of current global warming, not the Sun. Elevated atmospheric ca... | We don’t know what is causing climate change, but we are around 90% sure it’s the Sun. Methane is on Saturn’s moon Titan and it has no global warming; it is cold because it is far from the Sun. There’s also no consensus on the role of CO2. The climate problems of CO2 are artificial and made-up; it does not cause issues... | 1 – Lockwood (2008) Recent changes in solar outputs and the global mean surface temperature. III. Analysis of contributions to global mean air surface temperature rise. In Proceedings of the Royal Society of London A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences. 2 – Santer et al. (2023) Exceptional stratospheric co... | Review: Dr. Willie Soon, an astrophysicist and aerospace engineer who has received “much” of his research funding from the oil and gas industry, made multiple claims during an interview with Tucker Carlson denying the role of greenhouse gasses like carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane in driving global warming. The origina... |
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Dataset Card for Science Feedback
Dataset Description
A dataset consisting of Science Feedback's climate change claim/article reviews web-scraped with Python. Science Feedback's climate change reviews are one of, if not, the only existing gold-standard dataset that was written by nonpartisan climate change experts. Read more about Science Feedback here: https://science.feedback.org/about/.
Dataset Sources
The reviews were extracted from https://science.feedback.org/reviews/?_topic=climate.
- Repository:
- Paper [optional]: [More Information Needed]
- Demo [optional]: [More Information Needed]
Curation Rationale
This dataset was created to test and fine-tune The Endowment for Climate Intelligence (ECI)’s climategpt model’s performance on non-binary climate change claims. This will help determine its usefulness in real world applications where claims do not always fall under the binary categories “correct” and “incorrect.” For testing and fine-tuning, the verdicts were consolidated into 5 categories to increase the number of samples per class and to avoid confusing the model with too many categories without enough samples (see merge_science_feedback_labels.ipynb in github repository).
Data Fields
- url: The URL of the claim/article review.
- verdict: A keyword or float assigned by the reviewer to label the claim (social media, podcast, etc.)/article on a scale of scientific credibility. Check https://science.feedback.org/process/ for more information on Science Feedback’s methodology. The latest reviews use keyword verdicts but Science Feedback used to use a numerical credibility scale (-2.0 to 2.0).
- source: The source of the claim/article being reviewed.
- claim: The main claim of the source made concise (social media, podcast, etc.). This is unique to sources that have a keyword verdict.
- headline: Headline of the article being reviewed. This is unique to sources that have a float verdict.
- verdict_detail: Explanation for why the verdict was given.
- key_takeaway: A summary, or key takeaway, of the review.
- full_claim: The full claim of the source. The full claim section is always present when the claim is present.
- references: The references listed at the bottom of the claim review (if it exists)
- review: The text that reviews the claim/article in question and supports the verdict.
Source Data
According to Science Feedback, "Science Feedback editors select claims or articles for review that are the most viral on social media and/or are published by sources with large readership. Either must contain potentially verifiable claims in the scientific realm." (https://science.feedback.org/process/)
Data Collection and Processing
Used Python's requests and BeautifulSoup libraries to loop through each claim/article review page and extract the html file as a string. Also used pandas library to save extracted data fields as a csv file. Extracted reviews were minorly processed for consistency in format:
- Text not part of the review was omitted (e.x.: “SEE OUR METHOD OF EVALUATION →”) (lines 52, 75-76 of main code)
- The “VERDICT DETAIL” heading was omitted (line 52 of main code)
- New line and tab characters (“\n” and “\t”) were replaced by a space and empty string respectively (line 52 of main code)
- A “: ” was added after each scientist and heading’s title (lines 80-86, 93-105 of main code)
- e.g.:
- “Amber Kerr Researcher, Agricultural Sustainability Institute, University of California, Davis” → “Amber Kerr Researcher, Agricultural Sustainability Institute, University of California, Davis: ”
- "Scientists' Feedback..." → "Scientists' Feedback: ..."
- e.g.:
- References were split from the main review (lines 108-117 of main code)
- Removed “+” from verdicts of type float
Who are the source data producers?
"The Science Feedback association is a not-for-profit organisation registered in France whose mission is defined in its status as to improve the credibility of science-related information online, in the media and on social media." (https://science.feedback.org/about/)
Dataset Card Authors
Joongeun Choi
Dataset Card Contact
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