Is Twitter Wrong?

Is that really a picture of India from space during Diwali?

Tue, 13 Nov 2012 07:04:00 -0500

No.

This is how #India looks like from outer space on Diwali Night. Happy Diwali to entire world. Wish you brightness. Pic twitter.com/MindbIowingFac…
— Mindblowing Facts (@MindbIowingFact) November 12, 2012

It’s actually, as Simon Ricketts points out, a false-colour composite image of India, made up of images taken over the course of a decade. As the picture caption explains:

Satellite data from 2003 is coloured red, 1998 is coloured green and 1992 is blue. The three data sets are composited to form the image. Nighttime lights on the map that are white are lights that were present throughout the entire period. Areas that are marked by red have only appeared in 2003. Areas coloured green and blue were only present in 1998 and 1992 respectively but are no longer visible. This image was created by the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP), National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration, USA.

It should be noted that not only does this have the benefit of being true, it also makes the image much more awesome than something that just says “India does pretty colours sometimes”.

It’s also worth pointing out that the tweet above has over 14,000 retweets and 4,500+ favourites, and hasn’t had a follow-up correction. As a general rule, if you see a Twitter account that’s called something like “Mindblowing Facts”, it’s probably fairly safe to mentally substitute the words “Deluge of Bollocks” in place of the name.

Is that really a picture of Hurricane Sandy descending on New York?

Mon, 29 Oct 2012 09:44:00 -0400

No.

Amazing picture of hurricane #Sandy decending in New York twitter.com/J7mster/status…
— JAMSTER(@J7mster) October 29, 2012

Hurricane Sandy approaching New York. twitter.com/efitz6/status/…
— Eamonn Fitzmaurice (@efitz6) October 29, 2012

It’s actually a picture from 2011, of a thunderstorm over Manhattan during a tornado alert (which turned out to be uneventful in the end, although the US and other countries were struck with an unusually high number of tornados that year). The original source appears to be this Wall Street Journal article, and the picture was taken through a tinted window by a finance professional called Charles Menjivar (from his workplace, most likely - his current employers are situated pretty much where this picture looks to be taken from).

It is traditional, when the US is menaced by a weather event, for people to tweet pictures of things that aren’t it. Generally they’re pictures of supercell thunderstorms, because they look way cool and a lot more threatening than actual hurricanes, which mostly just look sort of grey and wet and blurry unless you’re looking at them from above. Here are some of the more usual supercell picture suspects, which have previously been claimed to be hurricanes Isaac, Irene and (from the pre-Twitter days) Isabel, but weren’t. Keep a weather eye out for them.

UPDATE: Oh look, another one:

Eery pic as Sandy moves closer RT @sparky4886: Brooklyn Bridge #HurricaneSandy twitter.com/maxzchua/statu…
— Sarah Simmons (@SimmonsFox5) October 29, 2012

That, as Elliot Bentley points out, is actually a stock picture of the George Washington Bridge from 2009.

UPDATE UPDATE: Hey, you know who might want to stop tweeting pictures of “Sandy” without checking them? BuzzFeed’s Andrew Kaczynski (who’s normally a bit more reliable than this):

RT @sirgutz: So it begins..pic of NYC right now!! Here we go Sandy. twitter.com/efitz6/status/…
— Andrew Kaczynski (@BuzzFeedAndrew) October 29, 2012

That second one is so fake (not just misattributed, it’s actually a Photoshopped picture of - naturally - a supercell thunderstorm) that it’s even on Snopes. (In his defence, he has corrected the latter one.)

UPDATE UPDATE UPDATE: Another one getting retweeted all over the place (and even written up by The Washington Post, although they’ve since killed the link) is this one of soldiers standing guard over the Tomb of the Unkowns even as Sandy rages around them:

Amazing soldiers standing at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier during hurricane Sandy. twitter.com/OMGFacts/statu…
— OMG Facts (@OMGFacts) October 29, 2012

It’s also not true - the picture is from September, as the 3rd US Infantry Regiment (aka The Old Guard), the regiment that keeps watch over the Tomb, themselves tweeted:

@washingtonpost We truly appreciate the support.However, this photo was taken in Sept. This is #Sandy goo.gl/OC5lz
— The Old Guard (@The_Old_Guard) October 29, 2012

The general claim, at least, has truth to it: the Old Guard are still maintaining their vigil at the Tomb, as the pictures they posted on Facebook show. (Thanks to Tom Mason for the tip.)

UPDATE UPDATE UPDATE UPDATE: LOLZ

The Statue of Liberty right now - twitter.com/Lauren_LaPoint… | #sandy
— Anonymous (@YourAnonNews) October 29, 2012

(That’s from the well-known cinéma vérité documentary The Day After Tomorrow, in case you hadn’t spotted it. Here’s what it actually looks like at the Statue of Liberty right now. It’s… a bit grey and blurry. And very noisy.)

UPDATE ^ 5: Special congratulations to BuzzFeed, who in their post debunking misattributed pictures that aren’t Sandy manage to misattribute the very first picture:

At this point, regular readers may already be saying “hey, that looks an awful lot like a supercell thunderstorm!” Yep. Once again, Snopes is already there.

UPDATE ^ 6: Ace work from Alexis Madrigal at The Atlantic, who’s doing the same thing but with the excellent idea of putting big FAKE/REAL graphics on the images so people can spread them on social media without worrying they’ll get taken out of context. Canny.

UPDATE ^ 7: SHARKS! There’s a bunch of pictures doing the rounds of sharks supposedly swimming around flooded streets. This one, we’re still unsure about (Alexis Madrigal is trying to track down the supposed photographer). It’s reportedly from Brigantine, New Jersey - if anybody recognises the street, holla:

But this one:

Is totally a fake. First page of image search results for “shark fin”, you get this - which, helpfully, has really distinctive markings:

In case you’re in any doubt, Alexis produced this nice overlay of the two (also available in GIF form in The Atlantic’s article). They’re identical:

While we’re on shark duty, be on the lookout for this one, which did the rounds following Irene, and is also a Photoshop job:

Oh, hey, there’s a surprise, it’s already going round again:

I TOLD Y’ALL! Shark on the highway in New Jersey!!!! @maxthewanted would appreciate this. #HurricaneSandy twitter.com/kdekranis9/sta…
— Katina DeKranis (@kdekranis9) October 29, 2012

UPDATE ^ 8: Right, I’m calling it. That first shark pic is a fake. Probably.

Michael J. Faris alerts us to what’s been reported as the original source of the shark picture - this guy’s Facebook page. He gives his location as Brigantine, NJ; he’s also got lots of other pictures of the flooding there. And he has the shark picture.

But he also has the second shark picture - the one we know is definitely a fake. And he keeps insisting it’s real, while his friends in the comments congratulate him on his Photoshop skills. And, in what my finely honed internet detective skills suggest could possibly be the giveaway comment beneath the first shark picture, one of his friends says “That’s the leopard shark from la jolla cove nice try kevO”. So, yeah. Fakety fakety fake.

UPDATE ^ 9: Might go to sleep now. Please keep following Alexis Madrigal’s post over at The Atlantic, which is still being updated. It has now attained epic length, and features a seal.

MORNING: A nice easy sharky one to wake up to:

A new one for you, @istwitwrong twitter.com/Anel_K/status/…
— Fabiola(@PHAVZ) October 30, 2012

That’s a pretty well-known Photoshop job that goes back to the flooding of a Toronto’s Union Station on June 1 this year (it subsequently got passed around as “the collapse of the shark tank at a scientific centre in Kuwait”).

Also, someone helpfully seems to have collated lots of fake shark pictures into a single tweet that gathers all the wrongness into one place:

WOW, can’t believe sharks are swimming the streets/yard of NYC/New Jersey. Scary keep yourselves safe guys #Sandy twitter.com/69D_b/status/2…
— D彡 (@69D_b) October 30, 2012

DAY 2: Let’s have some pictures that are real, shall we?

@istwitwrong #sandy from Jon Passantino: Wow: Floodwaters inundate Ground Zero construction site in NYC (via AP) twitter.com/passantino/sta…
— Aaron S. Kurland (@DrASK) October 30, 2012

That picture of the construction works at Ground Zero flooding is definitely real, and is likely to become one of the iconic images from Sandy - it was taken by John Minchillo, a photographer with the Associated Press. So, shamelessly jacking The Atlantic’s verification style:

@flashboy I’ve seen this pic coming up all over the place yesterday.I say it’s fake.Can you confirm? twitter.com/dancorey714/st…
— Dan Corey (@dancorey714) October 30, 2012

We can’t confirm it 100%, but… this Twitter account seems to be the original source for the image, supposedly of a trampoline entangled in power lines in Milford, Connecticut. However, they then give credit to a different Twitter user, who has a protected account. But a Spokeo search gives an address for someone of that name in Milford, CT, and both Bing and StreetView show images of houses on that street which seem to match the building in that picture (as does the layout of the power lines.) So on balance, we’re happy to call this one real.

This one doesn’t seem to offer much to go on (via Brandon Gressette):

But it’s real - it’s a picture of Casino Pier in Seaside Heights, New Jersey. It was taken by Brian Thompson of NBC New York - here’s a better quality version of it, and here’s another of the same scene from a different angle.

Here is a picture of a man saving a dog. However, the man is not saving the dog from Sandy, as the New Statesman’s Alex Hern (author of this handy guide to basic image verification) points out:

@aljwhite @amolrajan @shazzard Wow, he looks identical to a man who was saving a dog in Fiji’s floods 6 months ago! hamishinauckland.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/fiji-f…
— Alex Haunt (@alexhern) October 30, 2012

The Atlantic traces it back even further, to Tropical Storm Sendong in the Philippines in December 2011: So:

AS BEFORE: If you’ve spotted any non-Sandy pictures that are being tweeted (or facebooked, or instagrammed) as Sandy, do give us a shout on @IsTwitWrong (or my regular account @flashboy) and I’ll look at them.

Did a homeschooled teenager really write a letter warning that ducks would overthrow humanity because of gays?

Sat, 13 Oct 2012 09:08:00 -0400

Yes.

Jasmin, who is home-schooled, is worried that same sex marriage laws will lead to ducks taking over the world: twitter.com/leigh_howard/s…
— leigh_howard (@leigh_howard) October 4, 2012

The letter from 14-year-old, homeschooled Jasmin - warning that “if homosexuality spreads… it could threaten the human position on the evolutionary ladder, and say, ducks, could take over the world” - is definitely real, in the sense that it was published in New Zealand’s Northern Outlook newspaper on October 3, 2012 - you can read it online here, although you’ll you need to register (hat-tip to Padraig Reidy).

Not only that, but there’s been quite a bit of follow up in the subsequent letters pages of Northern Outlook. On October 6, several readers wrote in to question Jasmin’s grasp of evolutionary theory and duck sexual behaviour, and suggesting that the fact she was home-schooled may be to blame for this:

On October 10 (the Northern Outlook publishes twice a week) another letter was published, also disagreeing with Jasmin’s position, and making a broader liberal point about tolerance of homsexuality. It was published along with a nice picture of a duck:

On October 13, there was some pushback against those correcting Jasmin - including one letter which states that “there is no scientific proof for evolution” and that “homosexuality is a sin and one of the reasons for Canterbury’s earthquakes”. The other letter, while significantly less entertaining, is more interesting from a verification point of view - it comes from someone who appears to be a relative of Jasmin, and who discusses her homeschooling and how she came to her opinions:

This leads us to the other question about whether the letter is real - it was certainly published, but was the paper taken in by a hoax letter? It’s impossible to say for sure without actually tracking down and speaking to the family - but the non-standard spelling of Jasmin’s name, along with knowing roughly the area she is said to live in and the name of a supposed relative, gives us some indications that she is a real person. For example, the name is mentioned in this PDF from a New Zealand Christian group (as spotted by Anya Palmer). Both Jasmin and her relative appear to have signed this petition against gay marriage in New Zealand. Both give their location on the petition as being in the same area as the letters in the paper. Someone with her relative’s name also appears to run workshops on homeschooling from a Christian perspective, and so on. So, on balance, it seems likely that the letter is entirely genuine.

(Note: we haven’t included Jasmin’s surname or particular details of where in New Zealand she lives in the text of this post, because she’s 14 years old and we don’t really want to contribute to a set of Google results that might follow her around for many years to come. We also haven’t gone any further in attempting to dig up details of the family, because writing a silly letter to a newspaper isn’t a crime, and they should be left in peace, even if they are wrong about ducks and gays.)

Did The Sun publish a mocking story in 1991 comparing the World Wide Web to the Sinclair C5?

Tue, 04 Sep 2012 13:23:00 -0400

No.

How The Sun reported the invention of the World Wide Web. twitter.com/hififidelity/s…
— Nic English (@hififidelity) September 4, 2012

How the Sun reported in the new fangled “Internet” in 1992yfrog.com/mmc1ejsj
— Old Holborn (@Old_Holborn) September 4, 2012

This is an odd one, because the picture above is very obviously a joke - from the byline onwards - but nonetheless does appear to have been passed around Twitter for most of the day as though it was real. Or, at the very least, with a degree of uncertainty.

Partly this is because the most commonly shared version of the picture, above, strips it of its context. Here’s what the full page looks like:

So, it’s clearly not from 1991, as it claims, because it’s very noticeable that the design has been done on a relatively modern computer. (Also, on a pedantic point, while there was a web server running by late 1990, Tim Berners-Lee didn’t publicly announce the World Wide Web project until August 1991, so for the Sun to have front-paged it in May would have been a hell of a scoop…)

Compare it with this real Sun front page from later in 1991, and the difference is pretty obvious, from the overall look and feel to small details (like how the date and price are written, byline style, etc.):

So where does it come from? The answer is that it was actually made by The Sun themselves - it’s from Hold Ye Front Page, their (really rather good) educational site that features mocked-up front pages for historical events (there was also a book). In fact, the Hold Ye Front Page team are on Twitter, and have been cheerfully spending the day retweeting people saying that this picture proves how stupid The Sun are.

Are London 2012 Paralympic ticket pre-sales four hundred and sixty times higher than Beijing's?

Fri, 31 Aug 2012 11:46:30 -0400

It seems unlikely.

Extraordinary figures. Athens pre-sold 1,000 Paralympic Games tickets. Beijing pre-sold 5,000. London has pre-sold 2.3 million tickets.
— Richard Hawkes (@R_Hawkes) August 30, 2012

That claim is from a tweet by Richard Hawkes, the chief executive of disability charity Scope. Mr Hawkes provides no source for his figures, and (so far) hasn’t responded to questions about where he got the numbers from. His tweet has, at the time of writing, been retweeted over 5,000 times.

We can’t find any figures close to the ones he suggests - which, on the face of it, sound deeply implausible. Matthew Somerville dug out some alternative figures that sound much more likely:

Actual Beijing Paralympics ticket presales were 1.19 million as of 1st September 2008 (ref: news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-0… ). Not, umm, 5,000.
— Matthew Somerville (@dracos) August 31, 2012

The Athens Paralympics sold 450,000 before the Opening Ceremony - en.olympic.cn/news/world/200… . We’ve sold loads, sure, yay. But you know, facts.
— Matthew Somerville (@dracos) August 31, 2012

We’ve found other figures roughly in this ballpark - such as this story about Athens Paralympic ticket pre-sales “slumping” that puts the figure at 200,000; this official story from the Beijing organisers boasting of 480,000 sales almost two weeks before the Paralympics began. There’s little doubt that London 2012 is by far the most popular and highly anticipated Paralympics ever, with the 2.5million tickets available (almost a million more than the total available in 2008) almost entirely sold out in advance. That’s brilliant, and fitting for the country where the first ever Paralympics were held. But there’s no need to make up nonsense figures for previous Games to make ourselves look better.

Did Samsung really pay Apple $1.05billion in 5 cent coins?

Wed, 29 Aug 2012 10:23:00 -0400

No of COURSE they didn’t.

Apple recently won a $1.05 billion copyright battle against Samsung and Samsung paid the amount by sending 30 trucks full of 5 cents coins.
— What The F*** Facts (@WhatTheFFacts) August 29, 2012

For one thing: as much as the IP wars in the tech industry may have sometimes given this impression, multinational companies generally don’t act quite so much like petulant children as this. For another: the idea that Samsung would pay up just a couple of days after the initial judgement is hilarious. This thing’s getting appealed and appealed and appealed again.

But if you want some more facty responses, here you go. As the US Department of the Treasury helpfully notes, while 21billion nickels would technically be legal tender (unlike in the UK, where there are limits on the amount you can pay with small denomination coins), it’s still the case that Apple would be under no obligation to accept the coins as payment. And furthermore, there’s the issue of practicality. That many coins would weigh a grand total of 5,250,000kg. Split across (as is claimed) 30 trucks, that works out at 175,000kg per truck. Good luck with that; the maximum permitted vehicle weight both on Interstate Highways and in the state of California, where Apple are headquartered, is just under 36,300kg.

Also, it wasn’t a copyright battle, it was a patent battle.

Anyway: it’s been admitted that it’s not true. And as @elliot_bentley points out, it appears to have originated from a website that helpfully puts the words “humour” and “satire” directly above it, which should have been a clue. (Update: Charles Arthur, in his excellent Guardian debunking published at almost exactly the same time as this one, pegs the original source as being this Mexican website.)

Last Tweet Correction: Samsung paid $1.05 billion to Apple by sending 30 trucks full of 5 cents coins is just an internet HOAX.
— What The F*** Facts (@WhatTheFFacts) August 29, 2012

Worth noting: at the time of writing, the tweet with the false claim has over 6,000 retweets. The correction has just over 1,000. Bullshit spreads.

Is that really a pornographic picture of Richard Madeley and Judy Finnigan?

Wed, 22 Aug 2012 19:04:14 -0400

NO.

NO NO NO NO NO AARRGH GOD NO.

Erm? Richard and Judy in rude picture? My whole world is upside down. I’m happier seeing Prince Harry’s arse. bit.ly/NIwkjF
— SimonNRicketts (@SimonNRicketts) August 22, 2012

Don’t click that link. As you value your life or your reason, keep away from that link. (This is roughly how everybody reacted to seeing it.)

Here is a version of the image, but with any elements that might cause distress pixellated:

The image appears to show popular British TV presenting couple Richard Madeley and Judy Finnigan semi-naked and performing sexual acts. However, it’s not real.

THANK the lord. The Richard and Judy picture is FAKE. Here is it’s origin. (This is ‘yeuch’ too). bit.ly/SUnekE
— SimonNRicketts (@SimonNRicketts) August 22, 2012

This is the original, non-Richard & Judy version. Don’t click that link either.

Has the UK threatened to storm the Ecuadorean embassy to arrest Julian Assange?

Wed, 15 Aug 2012 20:01:00 -0400

Er… do we have to do this one? It’s complicated and messy.

UK government threatened to enter Ecuador’s London embassy to arrest Julian Assange, Ecuador foreign minister says bbc.in/PdH6RE
— BBC Breaking News (@BBCBreaking) August 15, 2012

UK threatening to enter Ecuadorian embassy and arrest #Assange. Your support needed at 3 Hans Crescent, London SW1 #Wikileaks #occupy #ows
— Occupy London (@OccupyLondon) August 15, 2012

Time to remind ALL media that there AREN’T ANY CHARGES against #Assange yet UK police wants to raid AN EMBASSY in order to arrest him.
— Anonymous (@YourAnonNews) August 15, 2012

There’s really no way to answer this definitively at the moment. What’s known: the Ecuadorean foreign minister, Ricardo Patino, claimed that such a threat had been made. This is apparently based on a diplomatic letter from the British embassy in Quito, which is (reportedly) this one here. Here is an (unverified) English translation of the letter. The Foreign Office says it was merely intended to keep the Ecuadoreans informed. Is that a threat? It’s certainly not an overt threat of planned or imminent action - the tone of the letter is stern but broadly aimed at making conciliatory gestures; it merely notes that the UK government believes it would have the legal right to enter the embassy premises to conduct an arrest should all other diplomatic efforts fail. But then, when in diplomatic language is an overt threat ever made? Ultimately, it’s a matter of interpretation, in which most people’s interpretations seem to be aligning with their previously held opinions of the Assange case, with sound and fury heavily outweighing actual facts.

What seems clear is that the main aim of the letter is to dissuade Ecuador from unilaterally announcing a decision on the Assange asylum case before the UK-Ecuadorean diplomatic negotiations have been allowed to run their course - as a Guardian report had suggested they were going to. Speculative interpretations of the facts have included: this being sabre-rattling on the part of the UK; this being sabre-rattling on the part of Ecuador; and this being mutual sabre-rattling to disguise the fact that a deal has already been reached, and that the letter is merely a way of providing Ecuador with cover.

The Ecuadorean foreign minister says that the decision has now been made, and will be announced at 1pm UK time on Thursday.

Police have been seen entering the embassy building tonight (although possibly not the embassy itself, which is only one flat within the building), but for what purpose is unclear. And reports suggest the entry was not forced, as phrases like “storm” and “raid” would suggest. No arrests appear to have been made.

Police source says officers outside “embassies in the news” is routine. But also warns raids are not announced, perhaps as hedge. #Assange
— Ravi Somaiya (@ravisomaiya) August 16, 2012

Police say they are not storming Embassy as Foreign territory & would be 7 days to apply based on clause.Vans leaving #assange #Ecuador
— Pete Maclaine (@petemaclaine) August 16, 2012

Legal blogger Carl Gardner lays out the actual law here - and while the UK does retain such a right under the Diplomatic and Consular Premises Act 1987, he is unsure that the apparent UK interpretation of the international law regarding how such a decision can be made is sound. However, as comparable events are rare and the case law is even more limited, such assessments of the legal situation are necessarily speculative. Gardner does additionally suggest that such a step would be a counterproductive move on the part of the UK government, not least because it would likely allow Assange to seek a judicial review, tying the case up in the courts for even longer.

One super-pedantic point: whatever the interpretation of the “threat”, strictly speaking no storming of an embassy would take place, as the legal mechanism for allowing the entry would be to strip the premises of their embassy status. There is no evidence that this process - which in any case would require a week’s notice to be given - has been set in motion.

This is why we normally prefer trying to verify pictures of Spider-Man.

Is Margaret Thatcher dead?

Tue, 14 Aug 2012 16:43:00 -0400

No of course she bloody isn’t. Just like she wasn’t dead the last hundred times she was dead.

Oh, sad. RT @officialskynews: BREAKING NEWSFormer Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher has passed away at age of 86 after prolonged illness.
— Meg Currell (@MeggyVC) August 14, 2012

This time, the “news” was tweeted by an account named @OfficialSkyNews, which is not an official Sky News account (and has now been deleted). Her Wikipedia page was also briefly updated to reflect the news, which was not true.

The last time Margaret Thatcher was not dead was May this year, when a French news outlet got taken in by a tweet from an account called @CBruniOfficial, which was not an official account of former French first lady Carla Bruni.

We will attempt to update this post every time Margaret Thatcher is not dead. However, in the absence of updates, it is generally safe to assume that the answer to the question “Is Margaret Thatcher dead?” is always “no.”

CAVEAT: At some point, it seems plausible that Margaret Thatcher will in fact be dead. When that time comes, here are some actual real accounts of major news organisations: @BBCBreaking, @reuters, @AP, @AFP, @SkyNewsBreak, @guardian, @thetimes, @nytimes, @washingtonpost, @AJEnglish , @BreakingNews, @BreakingNewsUK and, what the hell, @TMZ. Allowing for the possibility of hacks, falling for hoaxes, and so on, we would recommend waiting for at least three of these to independently report the news of Lady Thatcher’s demise before believing it.

Did BMW give cars to Team GB's male gold medal-winners, but not female medallists?

Sat, 11 Aug 2012 07:35:00 -0400

Not really, no.

Still shocked by Newsnight news that Team GB male rowers, even ones that didn’t get to Olympics - got BMWs. Women didn’t. Even with 3 golds.
— Stephanie Flanders (@BBCStephanie) August 11, 2012

Good fact - BMWs went to men who won medals in the #Olympics for GBR but not the women. #Newsnight
— emily bell (@emilybell) August 10, 2012

So all male GB athletes get given a free BMW yet the females, even the ones that won gold don’t? What are we? Back in the 19th century??
— Jodie Normoyle (@JodieNormoyle) August 11, 2012

The claim originated from comments made on Newsnight by gold medal-winning Team GB rower Anna Watkins, specifically about the situation within the rowing team. That statement then got amplified over numerous tweets to the point where BMW were apparently giving all the men free cars and none of the women.

BMW gave a statement to the Guardian denying the claim. In short, it makes three main points:

The gift of free cars had nothing to do with whether athletes got a medal - it was to support athletes in their training during the build up to the Games. Indeed, some of the supported athletes didn’t even make it to the Olympics.
Out of 150 athletes supported by the scheme, almost 70 (so slightly less than half) were women. This included gold medal winners Laura Trott and Nicola Adams.
The decision over who to sponsor wasn’t made centrally, but by local BMW dealers supporting local athletes.

Anna Watkins herself clarified her comments, backing up BMW’s claims.

To be fair to BMW plenty of female athletes got cars, it was just within the rowing team that it ended up wonky
— Anna Watkins (@watkinsteamgb) August 10, 2012

Unfortunate but not deliberate. They have done a great job with the games overall.
— Anna Watkins (@watkinsteamgb) August 10, 2012

It was the dealerships not the BMW HQ who chose the athletes so not a coordinated system. Lots of individual decisions all in favour of boys
— Anna Watkins (@watkinsteamgb) August 10, 2012

So while there did end up being a gender disparity in terms of the support different athletes in the rowing team got, it wasn’t as a result of a policy on BMW’s part - merely a cluster of independent local decisions all going a certain way in a single specific discipline. Frankly, it would be unlikely that any such decentralised system could operate without producing occasional clusters like this. (Of course, it doesn’t rule out the possibility that individual local dealerships could have been acting in a biased way.)

While there is certainly a strong argument to be made that sponsorship funds disproportionately flow towards male sportspeople, it’s not clear that this is good evidence for that case.

Are those pictures of Mars from the Curiosity rover?

Thu, 09 Aug 2012 11:48:00 -0400

No (mostly).

This is unreal! First HD panorama of Mars! panoramas.dk/mars/greeley-h…
— Cory Morton (@corymorton) August 8, 2012

That picture certainly is an HD panorama of Mars. But it’s nowhere near being the first, and it wasn’t taken by the Curiosity rover which landed on the planet a few days ago. It was taken by the still-functioning Opportunity rover between December 2011 and May 2012 (you can find the original TIFF, with added data, on NASA’s site). If you look at the home page of the site it’s on, they have HD panoramas from the MER mission (which comprised the twin rovers Opportunity and Spirit) dating back to January 2004. And the first panorama from Mars was actually taken by Viking 1 back in 1976.

Curiosity has sent back a panorama of its location, but it looks like this:

UPDATE: NASA have just released Curiosity’s first colour panorama.

And the picture of “sunrise on Mars” being attributed to Curiosity is also not actually taken by Curiosity:

No need for photographic competitions this year. NASA has already won with: Sunrise on Mars. #Curiosity #Breathtaking twitter.com/skydavidblevin…
— David Blevins (@skydavidblevins) August 9, 2012

It was taken by the Spirit rover in 2005. And it’s of sunset, not sunrise. It is on Mars, though.

There’s no shortage of genuinely stunning images coming out of the Curiosity mission, however (there’s even a GIF!) so not every picture ascribed to Curiosity is necessarily misattributed…

UPDATE: Another Martian picture that’s been doing the rounds, also attributed in many places to Curiosity, is this one:

Earth seen from Mars last Saturday twitter.com/Newstalkfm/sta…
— Newstalk 106-108 fm (@Newstalkfm) August 19, 2012

Unlike the others, this isn’t just misattributed to the wrong rover - it’s not a genuine picture from Mars at all. Phil Plait at Bad Astronomy has a convincing debunking of the image, which he suggests is most likely a rendering from a piece of astronomy software.

Did Bradley Wiggins say that thing to Piers Morgan?

Thu, 09 Aug 2012 07:55:00 -0400

No.

The line was said, but not by Bradley Wiggins, who was merely copied in on the exchange. It was actually written by Colm Quinn:

.@piersmorgan I was disappointed when you didn’t go to jail for insider dealing or phone hacking, but you know, each to his own @bradwiggins
— Colm Quinn (@mrcolmquinn) August 2, 2012

Does a London children's hospital employ Spider-Man window cleaners?

Wed, 08 Aug 2012 05:19:00 -0400

Yes, but also no.

At a London children’s hospital, window cleaners dress like this. They are awesome. twitter.com/PhoebeWedding/…
— PhoebeMiller Wedding (@PhoebeWedding) July 19, 2012

Those Spider-Men are actually cleaning the windows of the Sheraton hotel in Shanghai. The vagueness of “a London children’s hospital” in the description is a bit of a giveaway - as is the fact that, as far as we can tell, none of the children’s hospitals in London (Great Ormond Street, Evelina Children’s Hospital, Barts and The London Children’s Hospital, The Portland Hospital) have windows that look like that…

But one of those hospitals has indeed employed superhero-costumed window cleaners (including one Spider-Man) - the Evelina Children’s Hospital, as can be seen in this article.

(Thanks to Terence Eden for the original tip, and Dan Williams for the information about the Evelina window-cleaners)