In a six-month study of more than 1,000 Americans, R. Kelly Garrett and Robert Bond found that U.S. conservatives were less able to distinguish truth from falsehoods in 20 viral political news stories that appeared online between January and July 2019. Differences in the political orientation of these stories may help explain this observation, the researchers note, writing that ''we find that high-profile true political claims tend to promote issues and candidates favored by liberals, while falsehoods tend to be better for conservatives.''