Tuesday, June 23, 2020

Vice tries very hard to test the claim an officer found a tampon in his Frappuccino

From their write-up:
In order to see if the cop's story was even remotely plausible, Motherboard performed a science experiment. Aric Toler, a researcher at Bellingcat—an organization which analyzes open source media and has, for example, exposed the use of chemical weapons use in Syria by studying video and photographic evidence—suggested, in the interests of rigor, that we buy 10 Frappuccinos and 10 different types of tampons. Given the fact that we were biking and did not want to spend a fortune, we decided instead to try one Frappuccino and one tampon and see how that went.

...

Toler of Bellingcat said “lol not even close” when we showed him our photo, taken from a similar vantage point. When we explained our methods he said they were “rigorous enough for me.”
Read the detailed write-up here. It's quite informative!

Or, an update: