Claim Verification: "Seed oils (canola, sunflower, soybean, corn oil) are toxic and a primary cause of modern chronic inflammation and disease." — Disproved

Automated fact-verification of the claim: "Seed oils (canola, sunflower, soybean, corn oil) are toxic and a primary cause of modern chronic inflammation and disease." Verdict: DISPROVED Key Findings SC1 (toxicity claim) disproved: 3 of 3 independent authoritative sources — Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Stanford Medicine, and a 2024 peer-reviewed clinical trial review — explicitly state that scientific evidence does not support characterizing seed oils as "toxic" at normal dietary consumption levels. SC2 (primary cause of inflammation/disease) disproved: 3 of 3 independent authoritative sources — a 2018 systematic review of randomized controlled trials (RCTs), a 2025 population-based study of ~1,900 people, and a 2024 epidemiological perspective — find that dietary linoleic acid (the main omega-6 polyunsaturated fatty acid (PUFA) in seed oils) does not increase inflammation markers, and is associated with lower risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD) and type 2 diabetes. Adversarial checks found no evidence that breaks the disproof: The oxidized linoleic acid (OXLAM) hypothesis, the strongest scientific argument in favor of the original claim, is a minority position that (a) has not been confirmed in large modern RCTs and (b) does not claim seed oils are "toxic" or a "primary cause" of all chronic disease — it proposes a specific mechanistic pathway for one disease outcome (coronary heart disease (CHD)), which is far narrower than the original claim. 2 of 6 citations are partially verified (Harvard: 50% fragment match; PMC 11600290 for SC1: aggressive normalization). The disproof of SC2 rests entirely on 3 fully verified sources, meaning the SC2 disproof is not dependent on these partial matches. Files proof.py — Re-runnable Python verification script proof.md — Structured proof report proof_audit.md — Full verification audit trail proof_narrative.md — Plain-language summary proof.json — Machine-readable structured data Generated by Proof Engine v0.10.0.