News on Nobel laureate Amartya Sen’s death is based on a hoax and is fake. - FACTLY
Sai Krishna Muthyanolla
October 11, 2023
A post claiming that Indian economist and Nobel laureate, Amartya Sen died at 89 is being shared on social media. Let’s verify the claim made in the post.
Claim: Nobel laureate economist Amartya Sen passed away at 89.
Fact: The news is based on a hoax. Amartya Sen’s daughter clarified that her father is totally fine through a post on X. Hence, the claim made in the post is False.
On a relevant keyword search about the claim, we found that this news was fake and spread through a fake account. We found Amartya Sen’s daughter’s post on X which clarified the claim by mentioning that her father is totally fine and is as busy as ever.
Friends, thanks for your concern but it’s fake news: Baba is totally fine. We just spent a wonderful week together w/ family in Cambridge—his hug as strong as always last night when we said bye! He is teaching 2 courses a week at Harvard, working on his gender book—busy as ever! pic.twitter.com/Fd84KVj1AT
This fake news was originally shared by a fake Twitter account created in the name of Claudia Goldin. Based on a tweet in the same account, we found that this was created by Italian journalist Tommaso De Benedetti. The account is no longer available on social media.
Subsequent research based on this information led to an article published by the Guardian in 2012. The article reported Tommaso De Benedetti saying that “Twitter works well for deaths,” speaking for the first time about his desire to expose how unreliable social media can be as a news source.
To sum up, news of Nobel laureate Amartya Sen’s death is based on a hoax and is fake.