Ben Carson Under Scrutiny over 'Questionable' Biographical Claims
Ben Carson has, once again, become the target of public scrutiny after a new media report exposed his questionable account about protecting some white students from hate attacks.
Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson has defended his claims that he got a full scholarship offer to study at West Point and attempted to stab a friend during his troubled younger years. He also claimed that after Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s assassination, he hid some white students inside a biology lab at the Southwestern High in Detroit to protect them from hate attacks, but The Wall Street Journal found no confirmation of that story, according to NBC News.
Carson said he was a junior student at the Southwestern High and was working part time at the biology lab at that time. However, the WSJ interviewed a half-dozen of the retired neurosurgeon's classmates and high school physics teacher but could not confirm the story, the report details.
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The Southwestern High story is just one of the several biographical claims that helped Carson gain the support of evangelical voters. He used this story to strengthen his image of a religious doctor who rose from his troubled past.
In 1990, Carson released an autobiography titled "Gifted Hands" that recounted how a Yale professor told all his Perceptions 301 students that they had to retake the final exam because all the test papers had been burned. Carson said all of his classmates walked out of the room but he remained, only to learn that the professor was just conducting an honesty check. He said the teacher gave him $10 for being honest and even claimed that a photographer from The Yale Daily News took his picture for student newspaper, the International Business Times reports.
When WSJ checked The Yale Daily News archives, no photo of Carson or story mentioning a Perceptions 301 class were found. Another factor that further fueled the doubts over Carson's story is Yale Librarian Claryn Spies' statement denying any program under the name Perceptions 301 during the time that the retired neurosurgeon was a student there, the report relays.
Now that Carson has become the subject of public scrutiny, the Republican presidential frontrunner accused the media of not exerting the same effort to examine President Barack Obama's history when he was still running for the position in 2008. On Saturday, he lashed out via Twitter at "biased media" and praised his campaign for being able to raise $3.5 million this week amid the issues.
"My job is to call you out when you're unfair," NBC quotes Carson's statement to the media on Friday. "And I'm going to continue to do that."
Despite the rising number of speculations over Ben Carson's biographical accounts, his campaign is adamant that the Republican frontrunner did not falsify any of the stories in his autobiography.
