We try to avoid straying beyond science on this blog, but sometimes — as in the case of This American Life, which not long ago had to retract a segment featuring Mike Daisey that had been critical of the conditions in a Chinese factory linked to Apple — we can’t help ourselves. Like now.
A retraction might be the next tune for one Timothy Michael Poe, who has been a contestant on America’s Got Talent. According to the Associated Press, the aspiring country singer told the show’s judges that:
he spent 14 years in the military, and suffered a broken back and brain injury when he was hit by a grenade in Afghanistan in 2009.
Trouble is, while Poe served with the Minnesota Army National Guard from 2002 to 2011, including stints in Kosovo and Afghanistan, the bit about the injury doesn’t seem to be true. As the AP is reporting:
“Sgt. Poe’s official military records do not indicate that he was injured by a grenade in combat while serving in Afghanistan in 2009, as he reports,” Lt. Col. Kevin Olson, a spokesman for the Minnesota National Guard, said in a statement.
Olson goes on:
“We looked very closely at his record,” Olson said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press. “We did not find something to substantiate what he said.”
We’re guessing some sort of retraction likely will be forthcoming.
Apparently, his memory has been playing tricks on him since the time he came under sniper fire at Sarajevo airport.
Refresh my memory, was the before or after he invented the internet?