Recently, I encountered a bizarre claim about deaths from two different causes, and a link to a supposèd fact-check at Lead Stories, which unequivocally called the claim false. However, when I read the rest of the report, the alleged fact-checker had only failed to find substantiation for the claim. So I sent an inquiry to Alan Duke, the Editor-in-Chief:

Date: Sun, 27 Jun 2021 05:12:03 -0700
To: alan@leadstories.com
Subject: Method?

How do you get from your not knowing of any substantiation of a claim to a declaration that the claim is false?

Merely not knowing that a claim is true is equivalent to merely not know that it is false. Declaring it to be unproven would be perfectly reasonable, but that's not always what you do (though it may sometimes be what you do).

When declaring an unproven claim to be false, or its unproven contradiction to be false, do you flip a coin? or do you decide by some other method?

I've not received a reply.

Now, some people will declare You can't prove a negative! But the mathematic form of the claim being checked was x > y . Accepting that x and y correspond to real numbers, the contradiction of the claim is y ≥ x . I don't know that one of these claims should be regarded as positive and the other as negative.

Of course, all but the most terribly gullible understand that what is now-a-days called fact-checking is primarily concerned to protect some narrative or to attack some narrative, and will disregard even basic logic if that concern seems best served by doing so.