Even the publisher’s notes state it may contain “potential errors”

3 Dec 2021 | Full Fact's weekly news
View in your browser ([link removed])

FACT CHECK
Concerns raised about legitimacy of research linking vaccines and heart attacks

A clip of cardiologist Dr Aseem Malhotra on GB News talking about claims linking the Covid vaccines to heart attacks has been viewed over two million times on Twitter. But the research he cites as evidence has serious flaws.

Dr Malhotra failed to mention that the journal which published an abstract of the research has issued an “expression of concern” about it, noting that it contains “potential errors” and “may not be reliable”.

The research was presented at a meeting of the American Heart Association (AHA) in the form of a poster (a format used to present summary findings of research at conferences) and only the abstract has been published in an open-access format.

The AHA asserts that it’s not clear if the results are due to chance or some other factor. A further issue is that the study doesn’t actually measure the risk of heart attacks directly, but the PULS score. There’s little evidence on why this might be a reliable metric to measure the risk of heart attacks.

The author is not clear that only anecdotal data was used, meaning there may be an element of selection bias, affecting the legitimacy results. And in addition to all this, the research has not been peer-reviewed.

All of the above means the work cannot be used as a basis upon which to build the argument that Covid-19 vaccines increase the risk of heart attacks, as Dr Malhotra went on to say on GB News.
Other evidence ([link removed])
Thank you for standing with us in 2021 ([link removed])

Whether it was reading our work, donating, or sending in posts and images that just didn't look right–your support this year has taken us closer to the honest and accountable debate we all deserve.

Thanks to you and thousands of others, hundreds of false claims were fact checked, resulting in corrections in the BBC, the Economist, the Sun, the Guardian, Hansard and many other places.

Every small bit of support helped give tens of millions of people a better choice than bad information. Thank you!
Find out the difference you've made ([link removed])
FACT CHECK
Resettlement figures don’t give us the full picture on refugee numbers ([link removed])

A clip of health secretary Sajid Javid telling Sky News that the UK has resettled more refugees than any other country in Europe since 2015 has been watched on social media over a million times.

But while this is technically correct, “resettlement” only applies to a small percentage of the number of refugees a country might accept. The Home Office told us that since 2015, the UK has resettled 25,000 refugees. It’s true that this is more than any other country in Europe.

But other countries in Europe have accepted far more people for protection as a whole than the UK.

“Resettled” only refers to refugees who have been resettled in a specific country through an official resettlement scheme. The majority of people granted protection after entering the EU and the UK are asylum seekers, which means they have not been pre-approved for resettlement through an official scheme but applied for asylum once they reached their destination.

The UK issued 19,049 “first instance” decisions on asylum cases in 2020, granting a positive outcome to 9,072 of these.

This is far fewer than a number of other European countries, such as Germany’s 98,000 people, Spain’s 51,200, Greece’s 35,800. Though these figures aren’t perfectly comparable.

A better way to compare the number of asylum decisions between European countries over the course of five years is to look at the number of positive first-instance decisions on asylum applications from 2015 to 2019 (before Brexit).

Germany accepted by far the highest number of asylum applications in the first instance in the EU, with 982,695 positive decisions between 2015 and 2019. That’s seventeen times more than the 57,560 the UK made over the same period of time.
A closer look at the numbers ([link removed])
EXPLAINER
Our refugees explainer ([link removed])

Following the tragic deaths of 27 people in the English Channel, there has been renewed debate on the topic of migrants, asylum seekers and the facts around asylum applications.

We take a look at the common claims, misconceptions and facts.

Everything you need to know ([link removed])
FACT CHECK
Misleading for Nadine Dorries to say Channel 4 is ‘in receipt of taxpayers’ money’ ([link removed])

Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries told a select committee hearing at the House of Commons that Channel 4 was “in receipt of public money,” later claiming specifically “taxpayers’ money.”

This is misleading—and potentially not true depending on your understanding of what it means to be “in receipt” of such money.

Channel 4 is a publicly owned ‘public corporation’, which entirely funds itself through commercial activities, mainly advertising. Indeed, the most recent year’s figures show that the channel generated a pre-tax surplus.

On Twitter, Ms Dorries said: “C4 borrowings sit on the Gov balance sheet.” It’s true that Channel 4’s borrowing counts as government borrowing. However, we can find no evidence of the government ever having to cover the channel’s debts.

The Treasury itself classifies Channel 4 as a “self financing public corporation.” Channel 4 also pays tax to the government, so it may even be a net contributor to the public purse.

C4 and the taxpayer ([link removed])
MORE FACT CHECKS
Also this week...
* Email asking people to pay for Omicron Covid-19 tests is a scam ([link removed])
* Figures in viral mask graphic aren’t substantiated ([link removed])
* MPs cannot claim for alcohol from expenses ([link removed])
* It’s not ‘anti-science’ to wear a face mask ([link removed])
* And no, Covid-19 vaccines don’t cause ‘a form of AIDS’ ([link removed])

Read our latest fact checks ([link removed])
Stop the spread of bad information

Find these updates useful? We'd be incredibly grateful if you could share our fact checks and help more people access good information.
[link removed] Share ([link removed])
[link removed]: https%3A%2F%2Ffullfact.org%2Fhealth%2Fcovid-vaccines-heart-disease%2F Tweet ([link removed]: https%3A%2F%2Ffullfact.org%2Fhealth%2Fcovid-vaccines-heart-disease%2F)
[link removed] Forward ([link removed])
[link removed] Share ([link removed])
All the best,
Team Full Fact

============================================================
** Follow us ([link removed])
** Donate ([link removed])
** Like us ([link removed])
** Follow us ([link removed])
Have any questions or feedback? Please ** get in touch via our contact form ([link removed])
. We do not respond to direct replies to this email address.

Find out ** how Full Fact is funded ([link removed])
.

Copyright © Full Fact 2021 - All rights reserved

A registered charity (no. 1158683) and a non-profit company (no. 6975984) limited by guarantee and registered in England and Wales.

Our mailing address is:
2 Carlton Gardens, London, SW1Y 5AA

We use Mailchimp to send you our emails and to see which articles are most popular. ** Read our privacy policy ([link removed])
or ** Mailchimp's privacy policy ([link removed])

** unsubscribe from this list ([link removed])
** update subscription preferences ([link removed])