Just about everyone twisted Elizabeth Warren's DNA The Massachusetts Democrat has a history of making dubious claims to Native American ancestry, the kind of stuff that could weigh...
| |  | | Democracy Dies in Darkness | | | | | | | | | | The truth behind the rhetoric | | | | | | Just about everyone twisted Elizabeth Warren's DNA The Massachusetts Democrat has a history of making dubious claims to Native American ancestry, the kind of stuff that could weigh her down if, say, she ever ran for president. This week, Warren released the results of a DNA test that once and for all showed she had indigenous genetic material — not a lot, but there it is, in the test results. Or maybe it is a lot? Almost everything you read about Warren's test was wrong. Journalists and partisans on both sides all botched the genetic science when Warren's test results were released. The Boston Globe issued two separate math corrections after publishing the first report on Warren's announcement. At first, the line was that Warren could be 1/32nd Native American at most and possibly just 1/512th Native American. In the end, the Globe corrected the numbers to 1/64th and 1/1024th. The RNC then issued a news release directing reporters to a 2014 New York Times report that said "European-Americans had genomes that were on average 98.6 percent European, .19 percent African, and .18 Native American." So it sounded like Warren had less Native American DNA than the average European-American. But these numbers are not a scientifically accurate way to talk about Warren's test results, not to mention that Native American leaders reject the idea that a distant DNA strand makes someone a member of a tribe. Here's the bottom line: The test results show that Warren has a distinct strand of indigenous genetic material in Chromosome 10. It may not be much, but it's wrong to say it's as little as 1/1024th or that it's less than the average European-American. We gave Three Pinocchios all around, including to our initial tweet repeating the misleading numbers. |  | | | Enjoy this newsletter? Forward it to someone else who'd like it! If this e-mail was forwarded to you, sign up here for the weekly newsletter. Hear something fact-checkable? Send it here, we'll check it out. Still no evidence Menendez slept with underage sex workers We've handed out a ton of Pinocchios this year for incendiary and fact-free political ads across the country. But a stunning attack ad in the Senate race in New Jersey takes the cake. Republican nominee Bob Hugin, a former pharmaceutical executive who has struggled in the polls, is running an ad rehashing old, unproven accusations that Menendez slept with underage prostitutes in the Dominican Republic. There's an FBI affidavit that lays out this "evidence," the female narrator in Hugin's ad says. Except, investigations by the FBI and a multitude of U.S. news organizations turned up zero evidence that Menendez slept with any prostitutes. The FBI didn't even have probable cause on Menendez, although the senator was indicted for corruption and was not convicted at trial. The same affidavit referenced in Hugin's ad clearly says the FBI couldn't confirm the accusations, which all came from an anonymous tipster, "Peter Williams." The Washington Post reported on intelligence received by U.S. officials that Cuban agents made the whole thing up to smear the powerful Democratic senator and Castro foe — and that "Peter Williams" was fake. Hugin said he wasn't accusing Menendez of sleeping with minors (right ...), only that people should review all the facts and decide for themselves. We reviewed all the facts and decided to give Four Pinocchios to Hugin. |  | | | The unrunnable ad Speaking of attack ads, we want to make note of a Colorado TV station's decision to stop running an advertisement from a pro-Republican group attacking the Democratic candidate in the governor's race, Jared Polis. The independent-expenditure ad mischaracterized a run-in Polis had with a former female employee who was allegedly trying to steal documents, suggesting that Polis tried to pin the blame on her for a physical altercation. Fact-checkers debunked the claims in the ad, attorneys for Polis sent a letter to TV stations calling the ad defamatory, and KMGH-Denver 7 decided to yank it. Kudos! We're always looking for fact-check suggestions. You can also reach us via email, Twitter (@GlennKesslerWP, @mmkelly22, @rizzoTK or use #FactCheckThis), or Facebook (Fact Checker). Read about our rating scale here, and sign up here for our weekly Fact Checker newsletter. Scroll down for this week's Pinocchio roundup. — Salvador Rizzo | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
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