Pinocchios, assign thyselves: Who checks the fact-checkers?

Georgia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams recently came under fire for a false claim about embryonic development. Glenn Kessler, fact-checker at the Washington Post, chimed in with his own analysis. But instead of setting the record straight, he tweeted another inaccurate remark. …

Until recently, even Planned Parenthood conceded that in the second month of pregnancy, “a very basic beating heart and circulatory system develop” during weeks 5-6 of pregnancy. Their website now references “cardiac activity” during “the earliest stage of the heart developing.”

Abrams’ claim that a heartbeat detected at six weeks of pregnancy is nonexistent and “a manufactured sound” is false, as is Kessler’s claim that ultrasound detects electrical activity, not the motion of a heart. For two years, Abrams has urged Americans to “follow the science,” while Kessler has insisted that at his newspaper, “we deal in facts.” Both are laudable goals – and equally applicable to the speaker, as well as their audiences.