Thread by @lwoodhouse

The "fact-checking" of the Fauci beagle story is breathtakingly dishonest. This just popped up under "What's happening" in my Twitter feed. The headline is not only false; it also does not reflect what the article itself says.

Here's the article it links to. First of all, it does not say that Fauci "was not involved in animal research." It says he was not involved with *one single reported experiment.*

Moreover, what is this article even fact checking? Where this experiment is described, including in my own piece, it's correctly identified as funded by NIH, not NIAID (NIMH is part of NIH). There's only ONE prominent place where it's wrongly identified, and that was in a TWEET.

So this whole fact check, which is prominently boosted by Twitter, and which has a headline that needs to be fact checked itself, is in response to a tweet by Candace Owens. That's it. Does a tweet by Candace Owens even merit a fact check?

The effect, of course, is to create the impression that the entire story of Fauci's oversight of four decades' of animal experimentation is bunk, and is just a partisan conspiracy theory. Which is completely untrue. I can't prove it but I suspect that's its *intended* effect.

Here's Snopes' fact check, which is only marginally better. snopes.com/fact-check/fau…

Snopes claims that the veracity of the story is a mixed bag, but its main claim to it being partially untrue comes down to this:

Fauci heads NIAID. Whether or not the experiment was "personally approved" by Fauci is an absurd standard. Can you imagine a Snopes fact check saying it's unclear whether Trump "personally approved" acts of abuse by ICE agents, so it's questionable whether he's responsible?

"ICE is funded in large part through annual funds allocated by Congress, though direct deportations may be signed off on by various leaders within ICE. However, there is no evidence that these deportations were personally approved by Trump."

Three Pinnochios.