Did Ben Carson, retired neurosurgeon and former Department of Housing and Urban Development secretary, endorse a cure for tinnitus and hearing loss? No, that's not true: A spokesperson for Carson called the video a "scam and completely fake." Additionally, digital forensics and deepfake-testing websites, which analyze audio, video, and other media, corroborated the Carson spokesperson's statement, finding that the recording was not authentic
The claim appeared in a post and video (archived here) published on Facebook by Healthy Lifestyle Tips on April 14, 2024, under the title "[NEW] Nobel Prize Winning Method To Stop Hearing Loss And Tinnitus For Good." The post's caption said:
My doctor told me that ear ringing can't be fixed and I should accept and live with it...Thanks to this NASA Method my ear ringing vanished and I can hear like in my 20s again....
I couldn't take any more of all that noise in my head, whistling, buzzing, roaring all the time in my ears. It was even worse when I wanted to answer my calls like I have a bomb inside my head ready to explode any moment. My focus to do anything was gone and people around me kept asking me "Are you listening to me?".
Thankfully an old friend of mine told me about some weird method she found on the internet that completely fixed her hearing issues...
Three months since then and I restored my hearing from my teenage days and my ear ringing is gone for good. My doctor thinks I am faking it...
Tap below to learn more. 👇 and see how it works...
This is what the post looked like on Facebook at the time of writing:
(Source: Facebook screenshot taken on Mon Apr 22 14:50:11 2024 UTC)
The video
The video, which runs 2 minutes and 20 seconds, shows Carson for the first nine seconds, while the counterfeit audio of him speaking continues throughout. This is what it said, in part:
Ears ringing? This means you're losing your memories every month. So if you're suffering from tinnitus, I'm going to tell you a secret that big pharma doesn't want you to know. A brilliant team of neurologists, ENTs and medical researchers gathered in a Houston, Texas, laboratory to research the origin of ringing ears. After countless brain scans on more than 40,000 test subjects, this team made a shocking discovery that changes everything we know about ear ringing. ...
An all natural brain tincture [herbal extract] that NASA astronauts use to silence their ear ringing in just two minutes. And the results have been incredible. It's been a huge breakthrough, with over 60,000 people reported eliminating their ear ringing the very first week. ...
Neither the video nor the caption provided any evidence to support the claims in the post.
Ben Carson
Brad Bishop, a spokesman for Carson, responded to Lead Stories' inquiry in an April 22, 2024, email. He said:
Dr. Carson has never endorsed or even heard of this product. This is a scam and completely fake.
Deepfake detection
To assess the clip's authenticity, Lead Stories also ran the Facebook post through three online tools -- Hive Moderation, Resemble AI and Illuminarty -- to check whether the video or its audio was altered or generated by artificial intelligence (AI).
The results for each tool can be found below:
Hive Moderation
The tool on the Hive Moderation website said the video is 99.4 percent "likely to contain AI-generated or deepfake content":
(Source: Hive Moderation screenshot taken on Mon Apr 22 15:29:18 2024 UTC)
Resemble AI
The tool on Resemble AI said the audio was "Fake":
(Source: Resemble AI screenshot taken on Mon Apr 22 15:36:55 2024 UTC)
Illuminarty
The tool on Illuminarty said there was an 86.9 percent "AI Probability" for the still image from the video:
(Source: Illuminarity screenshot taken on Mon Apr 22 17:50:35 2024 UTC)
Search
Additionally, Lead Stories did a search using keywords on the Google News archive of thousands of reliable information sites, visible here, which found no credible documents or reporting to corroborate the claim.
Read more
Other Lead Stories fact checks of claims involving Dr. Ben Carson can be found here.
Additional Lead Stories fact checks of claims related to deepfakes can be found here.
