Category
2014–2018 · United Kingdom / United States
A political consultancy obtained data on tens of millions of Facebook users without their consent and sold psychological targeting to election campaigns. The data harvesting is documented and was penalised. Whether the targeting changed any votes is not established.
Media & Technology · 3 min
1977–2007 · Global
Exxon's scientists modelled global warming accurately from the late 1970s. Their projections have held up. The company spent the following decades funding public doubt about the thing its own researchers had correctly predicted.
Finance & Economics · 3 min
1985–1987 · United States / Iran / Nicaragua
The Reagan administration secretly sold weapons to Iran, then an embargoed state sponsor of terrorism, and diverted the proceeds to fund Nicaraguan rebels whom Congress had explicitly prohibited it from funding. Both halves were illegal. Both were confirmed on the record.
Government & Intelligence · 3 min
1953 · Iran
British and American intelligence services overthrew Iran's elected prime minister in August 1953, after he nationalised the country's oil. For sixty years the United States denied involvement. In 2013 the CIA released its internal history acknowledging the operation.
Government & Intelligence · 3 min
1979–2024 · Global
A substance said to allow briefcase-sized nuclear weapons, traded on black markets since the late 1980s at millions of dollars a kilogram. It does not exist. The trade in it is real, and has been used as bait by security services.
Pseudoscience · 3 min
1994–2015 · United States / United Kingdom
A drug trial in adolescents that failed on every one of its eight pre-specified measures was published as showing the drug was effective and well tolerated. Two million prescriptions a year followed.
Medicine & Public Health · 4 min
1989–2007 · United Kingdom
Bolton Museum paid £440,000 in 2003 for a 3,300-year-old Egyptian statue. It had been carved in a garden shed three weeks earlier. The family behind it had been selling forgeries since the 1980s.
Historical Cover-ups · 3 min
1929–1980 · Global
Asbestos manufacturers knew by the 1930s that their product killed the people who worked with it. They edited the medical literature, kept diagnoses from workers, and kept selling for another forty years.
Medicine & Public Health · 2 min
2015–2020 · United States / Ukraine
The claim that Joe Biden forced out a Ukrainian prosecutor to protect his son's employer. The prosecutor's removal was allied policy, urged for the opposite reason, and the case in question was not active.
Government & Intelligence · 3 min
1933–1934 · United States
In 1933 a decorated Marine general testified that wealthy financiers had asked him to lead half a million veterans on Washington and install himself beside a compliant President Roosevelt. A House committee found his account credible. Nothing further happened to anyone.
Finance & Economics · 3 min
1976–1984 · France / Italy / Switzerland
An Italian television repairman and a Belgian count sold the French state oil company a device that found oil from an aeroplane. It worked by drawing the answer the operators had already been given. The state hid the loss for seven years.
Finance & Economics · 3 min
1965–1980 · United States
In the 1960s a sugar industry trade group paid Harvard nutrition researchers to write a review that shifted blame for heart disease from sugar to saturated fat. The funding was not disclosed. The review shaped dietary guidance for decades.
Medicine & Public Health · 3 min
1995–2024 · North Atlantic
The claim that White Star swapped a damaged sister ship for the Titanic and sank her for insurance is answered by the wreck. The yard number stamped on the parts is Titanic's. The insurance would also have lost the company money.
Historical Cover-ups · 2 min
1953–1998 · United States
Tobacco companies knew their product caused cancer and was addictive, and spent four decades and enormous sums manufacturing public uncertainty about both. The internal documents are now searchable online because a court ordered them released.
Medicine & Public Health · 3 min
2010–2019 · United States
The claim that Hillary Clinton sold a fifth of American uranium to Russia for donations. The committee that approved it has nine members, she was not the one who sat on it, and the uranium cannot legally leave the country.
Finance & Economics · 3 min
2006–2015 · Global
Volkswagen installed software in eleven million diesel cars that detected when a vehicle was being emissions-tested and turned on pollution controls only for the test. On the road the same cars emitted up to forty times the legal limit. It ran for seven years.
Finance & Economics · 3 min