TASK DEFINITION: Given a paragraph, generate a claim that is supported by the given paragraph. 1) The claim must contain information from within the paragraph. 2) A sentence within the paragraph can be used as a claim. 3) The claim should not have contradictions within the paragraph. 4) The claim should be at most one sentence long.
PROBLEM: A member of a small county commission in Florida became an online laughingstock after video spread of him endorsing a widely-debunked cure for COVID-19 (a.k.a. the "coronavirus") by a right-wing "news" outlet to his colleagues.During the March 20 2020 meeting, Okeechobee County commissioner Bryant Culpepper reassured his colleagues that his information was legitimate because he saw it on One America News Network (OAN or OANN), which he described as "the new Fox News.""There's a lot of baloney out there on social media. You've gotta be really careful. But I only brought it up because it came from a pretty reliable source," Culpepper said.According to a story he saw on the channel, he said, an OAN guest claimed that it was possible to beat COVID-19 by training a hair dryer on one's face at a temperature of 136 degrees Fahrenheit. (This is not true. )"In this interview with one of the foremost doctors who has studied the coronavirus, [he] said that the nasal passages and the nasal membranes are the coolest part of the body," Culpepper said. "That's why the virus tends to go there until it then becomes healthy enough to go into the lungs." (This is also not true. )But using the hair dryer, he said, would cause the virus to fall apart. "You hold a blow dryer in front of your face and you inhale with your nose, and it kills all the viruses in your nose," Culpepper claimed, falsely.He also indirectly promoted the "cure" on his own Facebook page, linking to local coverage of the meeting without mentioning that it covered his remarks:The claims that he said OAN and the "foremost doctor" were promoting have been roundly and completely debunked. And in reality, OAN is far from "pretty reliable." In fact, as the media analysis site Media Bias/Fact Check reported in reviewing the California-based channel, it's exactly the opposite:We rate One America News Far right biased based on story selection that consistently favors the Right and Mixed for factual reporting due to promotion of conspiracies, lack of sourcing and a few failed fact checks. OAN is one failed fact check away from moving to the Questionable Source list.The review cited an AdWeek story saying that staff members felt that the channel's billionaire founder, Robert Herring Sr., had become a "de facto news director" who pushed OAN into becoming supportive of United States President Donald Trump's run for office in 2016:According to internal emails, Herring has directed his channel to push Trump's candidacy, scuttle stories about police shootings, encourage antiabortion stories, minimize coverage of Russian aggression, and steer away from the new president's troubles, according to more than a dozen current and former producers, writers and anchors, as well as internal emails from Herring and his top news executives.Besides getting local coverage, Culpepper's attempt to paint the "blow dryer" cure as legitimate was shared on social media:Okeechobee County Commissioner Bryant Culpepper at emergency meeting says you can kill coronavirus by holding a blow dryer up to your nose after he saw it on "reliable source" OANN, warns "there's a lot of baloney out there on social media" #BecauseFlorida pic.twitter.com/n9dGDBQ4WW Billy Corben (@BillyCorben) March 22, 2020According to the Friendly Atheist blog, which covers religious affairs, Culpepper reacted angrily at first to the criticism:No one is holding a gun to your head to do anything you do not want to do but for some they don't have alot [sic] of options. All this wonderful Science you believe in yet Thousands die everyday from Cancer, Lukemia, ALS so why haven't they been cured with all the Scientist working on for years Go ahead laugh all you want and feel like fools when I am proven Right.However, he apologized on his Facebook page on March 22 2020. "I am Heartfully Sorry for comments I made on Social Media," he wrote:I was only trying to give comfort to those in Okeechobee who have no insurance to treat there [sic] families. I should have ignored the comments that I perceived as hateful and the embarrassment I caused to my Fellow Commissioners and our Administrator And [sic] her staff. Iwill not offer anymore suggestions unless they are tried and proven.Given the huge amount of disinformation circulating both on and off social media and the credulity with which certain officials are repeating it,it is probably best to receive health guidance from medical experts, not public figures without expertise who regularly quote ideas from far-right television networks without credibility.

SOLUTION: A member of the Okeechobee County Commission in Florida promoted a claim that using a blow dryer could cure people of COVID-19.

PROBLEM: The Associated Press has learned that the attorneys general in Illinois and the District of Columbia are examining how Juul's blockbuster vaping device became so popular with underage teens. The company's rapid rise to the top of the multi-billion dollar U.S. e-cigarette market has been accompanied by accusations from parents, politicians and public health advocates that Juul fueled a vaping craze among high schoolers. In addition to the ongoing inquiries in Illinois and the district, which had not been publicly disclosed before, four other state attorneys general are probing or suing Juul. Juul's top executives have disputed allegations that they've marketed their products to teens, declaring that they've taken unprecedented steps to combat underage use of its e-cigarettes. The company has shut down its Facebook and Instagram pages and pulled several of its flavored products out of retail stores. Juul also backs federal legislation to raise the minimum age to purchase all tobacco products, including e-cigarettes, to 21 nationwide. Juul spokesman Ted Kwong declined to answer specific questions about the investigations in an emailed statement but reiterated past company steps to prevent youth use. Juul announced Thursday that 50 retail chains have pledged to adopt the company's age-verification system, which requires sellers to scan a customer's ID before selling Juul products. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said in a statement Friday the Trump administration "will continue using every regulatory and enforcement power we have to stop the epidemic of youth e-cigarette use." A senior Illinois law enforcement official described to AP a wide-ranging inquiry being conducted by the office of Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul that is centered on whether Juul violated state consumer fraud laws and other statutes by designing and marketing its products to appeal to underage teens. The official was not authorized to speak publicly and requested anonymity. Marrisa Geller, a spokeswoman for District of Columbia Attorney General Karl Racine, confirmed in an emailed statement an investigation of Juul is underway. She said Racine is concerned about "the dramatic increase in the use of vaping products by district youth" as well as the policies and practices employed by e-cigarette manufacturers to prevent minors from using their products. The attorneys general in Colorado, Connecticut and Massachusetts have announced investigations of Juul related to concerns over underage use of its products. North Carolina's attorney general filed a lawsuit against Juul in May, asking a court to limit the company's sales and marketing in the state. All six attorneys general are Democrats. The Food and Drug Administration said last October it seized thousands of documents from Juul's San Francisco headquarters relating to the company's marketing. The agency has been investigating whether the company targeted youth with the flavors, design and ingredients of its products. The Wall Street Journal reported Friday that the Federal Trade Commission is investigating Juul's early marketing campaign and use of social media to promote its products. The FTC declined to comment. Juul has repeatedly stated that it understands the concerns about youth vaping and has taken "the most aggressive actions" of any company in the industry to combat the problem. It has spent millions of dollars on newspaper, radio and online advertisements pledging to keep its products out of the hands of young people. The company also has denied it ever marketed to anyone underage. Kwong said Juul's earliest marketing campaign, in 2015, was aimed at adults between 25 and 34. Based on the sales and revenue, he said, "there is no evidence that it drove use, youth or otherwise." Kwong said the company's paid social media "influencer" program was as a small, short-lived program that ended in 2018. Electronic cigarettes, which have been available in the U.S. since about 2007 and have grown into a more than $6 billion-a-year industry, are battery-powered devices that typically heat a flavored nicotine solution into an inhalable aerosol. Juul, which launched in 2015, now controls roughly three-quarters of the U.S. retail market for e-cigarettes. Last year, one in five U.S. high school students reported vaping in the previous month, according to government survey figures. Most experts agree the aerosol is less harmful than cigarette smoke since it doesn't contain most of the cancer-causing byproducts of burning tobacco. But there is virtually no research on the long-term effects of the vaping chemicals, some of which are toxic. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Friday that 215 teens and adults in 25 states including Illinois have contracted severe respiratory illnesses after vaping. However, the agency said a clear-cut common cause of the illnesses hasn't been identified and they are being called "potential cases" that are still under investigation. The CDC said in many of the cases patients had acknowledged they'd recently vaped a substance containing THC, the high-inducing ingredient in marijuana. The agency did not say how many of the patients were teens. Kevin Burns, Juul's chief executive officer, told "CBS This Morning" on Wednesday the illnesses are "worrisome" for the industry and for Juul "if we contributed to it." He said the company is in close contact with the CDC to get as much information as it can "so if there's any issue that was ... associated with us, that we can get to the root cause and understand that." In Illinois, the state's Department of Public Health has called e-cigarette use among teens an "epidemic" and said there is an alarming lack of understanding about the risk for nicotine addiction. Other areas being investigated by Raoul's office include: how Juul verifies the ages of people who make online purchases from the company's website; the amount of nicotine in the flavored solution and how safe those levels are; and whether Juul has improperly advertised its e-cigarette as a smoking-cessation tool. Kwong said the Juul system is designed to help adult smokers switch from combustible cigarettes and is not intended to be used as a cessation product. Neither Juul nor any other e-cigarette has yet been approved by the FDA to help people who smoke traditional paper-and-tobacco cigarettes quit. The Illinois probe began in the spring. Raoul's office is not coordinating its investigation with other attorneys general, the official said. Geller, the spokeswoman for Racine, declined to discuss the scope of the district's inquiry. However, a senior official in Racine's office wrote to a Juul representative in early February and asked for a trove of information about how district residents purchase the company's products. Among the data sought by Benjamin Wiseman, director of consumer protection, was a list of authorized retail stores and third-party online retailers that failed to comply with Juul's rules for preventing minors from buying and using its products. Wiseman also asked that the company "describe in detail the nature of the retailer's failure to comply" and what action Juul took in response. Racine's office, Wiseman wrote, learned from news reports and conversations with community members and other government officials that use of Juul's products by young teenagers in the district has increased dramatically in recent years. "Remarkably, one district high school principal estimates that half of the juniors and seniors at her school are using e-cigarettes, many of which we believe are Juul's products," Wiseman told Patrick Lynch, a former attorney general of Rhode Island who runs a lobbying and consulting firm that represents Juul. Lynch's firm arranged for a meeting in the attorney general's office last November that included himself, Juul chief administrative officer Ashley Gould, Wiseman and Assistant DC Attorney General Brian Caldwell, according to emails obtained through an open records request. Lynch is not registered as a lobbyist in the District of Columbia. The agenda for the meeting isn't described in the records, although one email from Lynch said they discussed Juul's efforts "to dramatically diminish youth access to their product."

SOLUTION: Juul Labs facing scrutiny from federal and state officials.

PROBLEM: The story does not mention the costs of screening or follow-up tests or treatment to the individual or, collectively, to society. Those costs are significant. This story uses several different statistics and expert perspectives to explain what the researchers found in their examination of the effects of mammography screening. It not only include the relative risk reduction (10 percent) and an absolute risk reduction statistic (among women in their 50s, a decade of screening would boost the likelihood of avoiding a fatal breast cancer from 995.6 out of 1,000 to 996 out of 1,000), but it also offered comments from different experts about how they would personally value effects of that size. The story notes that screening mammography exposes women to false alarms scares as well as the risks and harms of treating tumors that actually would not have become life-threatening. This story explains how this study is different from earlier research on mammography. It points out both advantages of the study methods (comparing women in regions with screening to those without as Norway rolled out a national program over a 9 year period) and limitations (an observational study like this is not as powerful as a randomized trial, and the study might have found more benefits to screening if it had lasted longer). The story also noted the uncertainty in the numbers the researchers reported and that the real differences might be different. The story does not exaggerate the risk of breast cancer or the need to be screened for it. The story includes comments from several independent sources offering a variety of perspectives. It does not mention that the study was funded by the Cancer Registry of Norway and the Research Council of Norway. The story notes that improved treatments appear to have reduced the breast cancer death rate even among women who did not have regular screening mammograms. Not being screened was clearly acknowledged as an alternative, something not all competing stories explicitly addressed. The availability of mammography screening is not at issue. This story does point out that the women who were screened in Norway had access to special treatment teams. And it noted that these treatments are available at "many major medical centers in the United States." Mammography is not new, but this story does a good job of explaining what is new about the way these researchers examined the effects of screening. The story includes comments from several sources and does not appear to rely on a news release.

SOLUTION:
Mammograms' Value in Cancer Fight at Issue