The claim that one in three South African women will be raped in her lifetime is not supported by any data. Inaccurate claims undermine the effort to tackle the true rape crisis.

The post Will one in three women in SA be raped? Blow the Whistle wrong again appeared first on Africa Check.

After a recent study tour of China the ANC’s head of research, Thami Ka Plaatjie, reported that the country has as many as five “opposition parties”. But he was not comparing apples with apples.

The post ANC’s head of research misleads by claiming China has ‘opposition parties’ appeared first on Africa Check.

Prime Minister's Questions went in heavy on unemployment and out of work benefits. We've rounded up and checked the claims.

The post PMQs follow up: unemployment and benefits appeared first on Full Fact.

It’s nine days until the election and there is plenty of political news out today. The Daily Mail covers criticism of Labour’s ‘use it or lose it’ proposal to encourage house building, they include comments from the Institute of Directors and a Conservative candidate. We’ll be publishing a factcheck on Labour’s rent control pledges later today, but before then, […]

The post Election update, 28 April: Polling, the Union, and ‘White Van Dan’ appeared first on Full Fact.

An article about rape in South Africa published online by the British Telegraph newspaper was peppered with statistics. Closer investigation reveals that most of them are not backed up by research.

The post British paper mangles SA rape statistics appeared first on Africa Check.

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The post Factchecking Deputy Prime Minister’s Questions appeared first on Full Fact.

Have you ever wondered where the foam in the ocean comes from? Or why the sea can look clear on some days and green, brown, or even pink on others? And how fish get the ingredients to make those omega-fatty acids that we’re told are so good for us? Well, the single word answer to all of these questions is: “plankton”.

Plankton are organisms that inhabit all water bodies – from lakes and ponds to oceans. The word plankton is derived from a Greek word – πλαγκτός (planktos) – meaning “I drift”, and so while plankton can move between deeper waters and the surface and vice versa, they cannot swim against the current. So sometimes we have vast numbers of planktonic jellyfish, fantastic swimmers within the water columns but helpless against the tide, stranded on our beaches. In size, plankton range from microscopic, single-celled organisms to multi-celled animals such as krills, jellyfish, crab larvae and juvenile fish.

We often think of the sea as being dominated by fish and whales. But microscopic, single-celled plankton are, in fact, the main drivers of life in Earth’s oceans. But how well do we really understand them?

For decades, the accepted view has been that these single-celled microscopic plankton can be divided broadly into two types. Food producing “phytoplankton” (also known as microalgae) are like tiny marine plants. “Microzooplankton”, on the other hand, eat the phytoplankton and are in turn eaten by bigger zooplankton, such as krills.

This division of microscopic plankton is akin to the plant-animal split in terrestrial ecosystems. However we now know that, beneath the waves, there is another microscopic plankton group – “mixotrophs” that combine features of “plant-like” phytoplankton and “animal-like” microzooplankton. And their mode of feeding is, but for their microscopic scale, the stuff of horror stories.

They are like miniature triffids, which can engulf living prey, suck out their innards, poison them, harpoon them, make them explode, and steal and reuse body parts. They can kill whole ecosystems in a matter of hours and alter the colour of the water – and yet they also shape the Earth’s atmosphere and support the growth of larval fish at critical stages of their life cycle.

For decades, these mixotrophs have been considered to be freaks of nature, prospering only when phytoplankton and microzooplankton are disadvantaged. Over the past five years, however, through a project funded by the Leverhulme Trust, we have established that the mixotrophs are far from freaks; indeed, mixotrophy is the norm rather than the exception.

This has major implications – it means that the base of the oceanic food web doesn’t follow the traditional “plant-animal” pattern. Instead, it is dominated by the activities of the single-celled mixotrophs, microscopic “triffids” which can photosynthesise like plants and eat like animals – all within the one cell.

A new type of life?

Based on our findings, we have proposed a new model for life in our oceans, arguing that the traditional split between the “plant-like” phytoplankton (microalgae) and the “animal-like” microzooplankton used to describe the oceanic food-web is no longer tenable. This model could overturn a century’s worth of our understanding of marine biology.

Indeed, mixotrophs have the potential to impact all of our lives, not least because they are major contributors to the food webs that support fisheries. This is especially true for the healthy growth of very young fish, which depend on them for food during the summer months.

Just like the triffids of John Wyndham’s classic sci-fi novel, however, mixotrophs can be dangerous, too – and to more than just other microplankton. The release of nitrates and organic nutrients, such as raw sewage or silage slurry, into coastal waters contributes to an imbalance of nutrient loads, which causes mixotrophs to produce toxins and mucus. The toxins can kill fish and close shell-fisheries. Muddy-coloured foam in estuaries during summer is the result of plankton secreting excess mucus – and this mucus can clog the gills of fish, effectively drowning them.

Mathematical models are used widely to aid environmental management, to study fisheries and to investigate the impacts of fishing and climate change on them. But such models do not take into account the presence and activities of the mixotrophs that we now realise comprise more than half of all microscopic plankton.

And this could result in serious flaws. We have shown that marine food web and climate change models that don’t include mixotrophs could be giving questionable results. Indeed, based on our modelling studies, we suggest that we start to take mixotrophs more seriously and include their remarkable impacts in mathematical models used to predict climate change and aid environmental management. They may be microscopic, but we ignore these little triffids at our peril.

Aditee Mitra receives funding from Leverhulme Trust, EU and NERC UK.

187 Syrian refugees entered the UK through a government programme. 4-5,000 Syrian refugees arrived in the UK since the crisis started. Which is correct?

The post How many Syrian refugees are there in the UK? appeared first on Full Fact.

Today's Airport Commission report accidentally suggested Gatwick had more short-haul flights than Heathrow. We're on the case.

The post Bad graphs: Gatwick needs a short-haul overhaul appeared first on Full Fact.

The UK Statistics Authority has written to Labour MPs pointing out that they haven’t been presenting statistics on zero hour contracts entirely clearly. Contrary to Labour’s suggestions, 1.8 million people are not ‘on zero hour contracts’ but rather around 1.8 million zero hour contracts were in use in August 2014. The number of people with a zero hours contract in their main job was estimated...

The post Statistics watchdog comments on zero hour contracts appeared first on Full Fact.

We’ve recently discovered two useful visual data services, which allow you to easily compare and contrast UK regions and constituencies on a number of issues in the run-up to the General Election. Constituency Explorer was launched this month and is a joint project by the House of Commons Library and Durham University and focuses on...

The post Compare your constituency ahead of the election appeared first on Full Fact.

Britain is gearing up for an increased risk of terrorist activity, according to the head of security agency MI5, Andrew Parker. He believes that the push against Islamic State in Syria and Iraq will force many UK-born fighters to return home and some of them will inevitably continue to pose a threat.

Part of their response to this will be to increase the use of preventative measures brought in to monitor people who are suspected of being a risk, but where there is not enough evidence to either try or deport them. TPIMs – or to give them their full name, Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures – generally include some sort of a sanction such as tagging or overnight home arrest.

The controversial orders made headlines in September 2013 when terrorism suspect Mohammed Ahmed Mohamed absconded from a west London mosque disguised in a burqa, despite being subject to a TPIM which required him to wear an ankle tag.

The government has recently reaffirmed its commitment to relying on TPIMs as part of its counter-terror strategy. It is seeking to renew the enablinhg legislation until 2021, since it would otherwise expire in December 2016. A government statement said that TPIMs “have been and remain a crucial component of the government’s national security response”.

TPIMs were strengthened under the Counter-Terrorism and Security Act in 2015 which reinstated forced relocation as one of the range of obligations that can be imposed on a terror suspect. Forced relocation was dropped when the old system of control orders was replaced with TPIMs by the coalition government in 2010.

Counter-terror toolkit

There seems to be a weary public acquiescence in the notion that reliance on these non-trial-based liberty-invading measures remains necessary in the face of persistent though shifting terrorist threats. They have come to occupy a niche from which they are now unlikely to be dislodged until 2021, if then.

The renewed commitment to continuance of TPIMs might seem surprising. TPIMs have been underused – as of March 2014 only ten people had been subjected to them since 2012. Two of those absconded – and most of the other TPIMs expired after reaching their two-year limit. One suspect was imprisoned for breach of his TPIM; no information was made available on the others once their TPIMs expired.

Only three TPIMs were in force by the end of August 2015 – and initially the coming into force of the Counter Terrorism and Security Act had no impact on their usage, despite their re-strengthening. Only two TPIMs were in force early in 2016 – and then only one. It appeared that they were not worth deploying in terms of their practical usefulness as part of the UK’s counter-terror response. But in late October 2016, shortly before the five-year renewal of the legislation was due, a revival of their use was reported and at present six are in force.

Reliance on TPIMs remains inherently problematic. Their use damages the UK’s reputation in constitutional terms – they rely on targeting terrorist suspects to curtail their liberty without a trial. So they create restrictions that have a punitive impact but avoid the safeguards accompanying a criminal trial – including the need for proof to the criminal standard. They therefore demand a radical departure from procedural and constitutional normality. Parliamentary scrutiny of TPIMs is very limited: in formal terms it need occur only once every five years to consider the renewal of the legislation.

On the other hand, there is a general public acceptance that TPIMs are effective in security terms as one minor but important part of the counter-terrorist toolkit. But, at face value, their efficacy must be questioned – since suspects are free to leave their residences during the day (TPIMs can impose only an overnight residence requirement) and may be able to abscond – as we have seen.

Growing threat?

Reliance on TPIMs must be juxtaposed to the current threat from terrorism; MI5’s head, Parker, recently stated in an interview with the Guardian: “There will be terrorist attacks in Britain” and there are about 3,000 “violent Islamic extremists in the UK, mostly British”.

The expected eventual military destruction of the ISIS “caliphate” in Iraq and Syria is also likely to lead to an increase in the number of high-risk returnees who have experienced weapons and explosives training – and, of about 850 persons who went abroad to support ISIS or similar groups, about half have already returned.

So it is not immediately clear what purpose TPIMs actually serve, given that if there is proof that a person has been involved in supporting terrorism they could be charged with a precursor offence, including giving support to a proscribed organisation. On the other hand, imposition of TPIMs only requires proof to the civil standard – and, also the government view is that there are some instances in which it is problematic to use security material in a criminal trial.

So if TPIMs are still found to be necessary, then enhanced parliamentary scrutiny is essential. We need to ensure that the cost in terms of Britain’s human rights record is in proportion to their actual value in terms of national security. At the moment, that’s debateable.

Helen Fenwick does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond the academic appointment above.