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The Facebook Files
Confirmed

The BMJ vs. Facebook's Fact-Checker Over a Pfizer Trial Exposé

The BMJ published an investigation on Nov. 2, 2021, reporting a whistleblower's allegations of data-integrity problems at a contractor running some of Pfizer's COVID vaccine trial sites. Facebook users who shared it saw a 'Missing Context' label from fact-checker Lead Stories, and the journal's editors wrote an open letter to Zuckerberg calling the fact-check 'inaccurate, incompetent and irresponsible.'

Dec 17, 2021
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Whose side it served: Neither party

Protected vaccine-confidence messaging rather than a party; it hit a mainstream medical journal.

What the record shows

Starting around Nov. 10, 2021, readers reported being unable to share the article or seeing it flagged as potentially misleading, with warnings that repeated sharing of 'false information' could lower their posts in the News Feed. BMJ editors Fiona Godlee and Kamran Abbasi wrote that the fact-check 'fails to provide any assertions of fact that The BMJ article got wrong.' Lead Stories responded on Dec. 18, 2021, standing by its 'Missing Context' rating. It said the allegations involved three of 153 trial sites, did not likely disqualify the trial, and 'were NOT provably ignored.'

In their words

“inaccurate, incompetent and irresponsible”— Fiona Godlee and Kamran Abbasi, BMJ editors (open letter to Zuckerberg) · source
“they were NOT provably ignored”— Lead Stories (response to the BMJ) · source
The other side

Lead Stories said the 'Missing Context' label placed no limits on traffic or ad revenue and was the most accurate rating available. It argued the BMJ's framing overstated what the whistleblower's allegations meant for the trial as a whole.

Sources

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