“186,000 dead in Gaza”: Fact or lie?

The Lancet didn't count 186,000 bodies. It published a letter projecting what the death toll "could" someday be; hedged, conditional, speculative. The hedging didn't survive contact with the headlines. Al Jazeera, The Guardian, and a UN Special Rapporteur were just a few of those who reported it as an estimate of dead, not a hypothetical. That's the actual story here: prestigious journals know what their name does to a number. A "not implausible" projection in the Correspondence section reads, to everyone downstream, like clinical fact. Projection → headline → statistic → weapon. The correction never catches up. Presenter: Erin Molan