meaning - Is "incorrect facts" a contradiction in terms?

I've seen this so many times and it drives me crazy. The latest was the actor Paul Giamatti setting some story straight in the press about him: "It's unfortunately an incorrect fact about me and it's all over the place."

I've seen this written so many times, in magazines, books, but surely a fact is, by definition, true. So there cannot be any such thing as a "false" fact. Right?

Answer

NOAD gives this listing:

fact |fakt| noun a thing that is indisputably the case : she lacks political experience—a fact that becomes clear when she appears in public | a body of fact.

So it would seem that something that is "indisputably the case" could not be "incorrect"; and I am sure that, strictly speaking, this is a fact.

Nevertheless, very often people state as fact what is merely opinion. In fact, whenever you hear someone start a sentence with "the fact is" or "in fact" you are well advised to weigh carefully whatever claim is being made.

We also hear people speaking of "true facts" (which surely should be a redundancy) and "alleged facts". In the sense that anything can be true, a fact must be true, but what is true is almost always negotiable. Something that is not proven should not be called factual, though people do it all the time.

Where does that leave us? I myself would avoid using qualifiers with the word "fact" but I would tolerate it in others; but then, I always weigh the claims made by others (especially news writers), and I advise others to do the same.