How many of our "facts" about society, health, and the economy are fake?

Remember the maternal mortality crisis? In 2022 and 2023, a lot of people were wringing their hands about how American mothers were dying at skyrocketing rates. Here’s what the Commonwealth Fund, a health-care-focused think tank that’s generally regarded as one of the top sources of public information on the U.S. health system, told us in 2022:

The maternal mortality rate in the United States has for many years exceeded that of other high-income countries…The U.S. maternal mortality rate has been on the rise since 2000 and has spiked in recent years.

And in 2023, the Wall Street Journal declared that U.S. maternal mortality was the highest it had been since 1965. These were only two of many outlets that reported on the trend. Politicians took note. Social media shouters declared one more piece of evidence of America’s rapid decline as a nation.

In 2021, Joseph et al. published a paper in Obstetrics & Gynecology demonstrating that the entire recorded increase in maternal mortality since 2003 was due to a change in the way data was gathered. In 2003, U.S. states began to include pregnancy checkboxes on death certificates. This led to a whole lot more women who died while pregnant being identified as such. The apparent steady increase in maternal mortality was due to the fact that states adopted this new checkbox at different times:

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