We do indeed live in an age of miracles. First case in point: Politifact has actually retracted one of its partisan “fact-checks!”

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/politifact-retracts-wuhan-lab-theory-fact-check

Back in the early days of the pandemic, they branded a claim that the COVID-19 coronavirus might have come out of a Chinese lab as a “Pants On Fire” (sorry, the juvenile term is theirs, not mine) lie and conspiracy theory. Now, in light of more evidence and questions coming to light, they’ve retracted that and say, “Currently, we consider the claim to be unsupported by evidence and in dispute.”

Of course, they could have said the same when it first came up. At the time, there was no evidence to support or debunk the claim because China’s government was blocking anyone from investigating it. For me, that should have caused suspicions to fall more on the “probably has merit” side. But as is often the case with today’s “fact-checkers,” Politifact committed the logical fallacy of an “appeal to authority,” or treating their preferred “experts” as if their views were unimpeachable objective truth.

Until these sources are able to differentiate a proven fact from a preferred opinion, I’ll continue to put quotation marks around “fact-checkers.”