Critical Readers

Five claims. We read the papers. You make the call.

Case 1 Claim 1 of 5: headline vs study

A claim can travel much farther than the evidence that first supported it.

Each case takes five claims that are doing the rounds, finds the research underneath them, and lays out what was actually measured. Then you tell us whether each one holds.

About the evidence: we link the primary research, and the public claim where one is being checked. Where free full text exists we link that; where it does not, we link the abstract. Where a paper disagrees with itself, or where something is unknown, we say so rather than filling the gap.

Five claims, five different ways of testing one. Start anywhere:

Past cases

0 of 120 words

Pick one when you are ready.

Check the sources

Use these sources to check the evidence and our reading for yourself.

    So, where did that leave you?

    And everyone else?

    Where we landed

    And we might have it wrong. This is our reading, not a verdict. Tell us where we went wrong

    What other readers spotted

    Nobody has written one yet. We publish the notes that point at a specific piece of the evidence and say what it changed. Yours could be the first one up.