Jeremy Corbell on statistics: what the evidence says · JRE #1315
SUBJECT: STATISTICS
The short answer
Corbell claims the U.S. government spends more money every year on Viagra than the $22 million spent on the Pentagon's UFO study program. Military spending on erectile-dysfunction drugs has in fact exceeded $22 million in at least one documented year: a widely cited Military Times analysis of Defense Health Agency data (cited by PolitiFact) found the Pentagon spent $84.24 million on all ED prescriptions in 2014, with $41.6 million of that on Viagra alone.
Not a true/false call. Every claim is logged with its sources; read the exhibits below.
The $22 million was for OSAP that was pushed through through Congress, three congressmen, right, an astronaut. It was pushed through. And that's what that $22 million, by the way, they spend more money on Viagra every year than they do studying UFOs.
What the evidence says 01 / RECORD
Corbell claims the government spends more on Viagra annually than the $22 million allocated to the Pentagon's Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program (AATIP) for UFO research. Military spending on erectile-dysfunction drugs has in fact exceeded $22 million in at least one documented year: a widely cited Military Times analysis of Defense Health Agency data (cited by PolitiFact) found the Pentagon spent $84.24 million on all ED prescriptions in 2014, with $41.6 million of that on Viagra alone. That figure is real but is a single-year (2014) snapshot, not a confirmed constant "every year" expenditure at that scale. The two budget lines are also not directly comparable: AATIP's roughly $22 million was a multi-year Pentagon research contract, largely funneled to a private company, while ED drug spending is an ongoing military healthcare/prescription cost in a very different budget category. The comparison is therefore built on true underlying numbers (Viagra/ED spending has exceeded UFO research funding) used in a rhetorically misleading way, since it implies a direct, apples-to-apples budget trade-off that does not really exist.