Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson speaks to reporters during a news conference. | AP Photo 6 challenges to Ben Carson’s biography

Ben Carson has zoomed to the top of GOP presidential polls due in part to his inspirational personal story. But as scrutiny around the pack leader intensifies, that biography is being challenged.

Questions about Carson’s background and the narrative the retired neurosurgeon has built over decades could come up in Tuesday's debate. Here’s a roundup of the issues raised and his responses:


1. West Point scholarship: Carson has said and written on multiple occasions since 1990 that he was offered a "full scholarship" from West Point, but POLITICO reported on Friday that he was not offered a scholarship.

Response: Carson told CBS’ "Face the Nation" this weekend that he had attended a banquet once where there were military officials who were very impressed with him and said they would be able to get him a full scholarship to West Point. “Well you notice I said it was offered. I never said I had received it,” he told host John Dickerson. “But I had already determined that I was going to go on to college and on to medical school.”

2. Violence as a child: Carson has described multiple violent episodes during his childhood — including an attempted stabbing of a boy and beating someone with a baseball bat. The incidents are an integral part of the story of how he has transformed into a soft-spoken adult. But CNN interviewed nine friends, neighbors and classmates who grew up with Carson, and they don’t recall any of these events. They instead said he was “quiet, bookish and nerdy.”

Response: Carson has declined to identify his victims but told NBC’s Chris Jansing on Sunday's “Meet the Press” that “because it was flash temper, I wasn't like that all the time. Most of the time, I was a reasonable person. ... So unless you happened to be there, or happened to be the victim of it, why would you know about that?” Carson’s mother, Sonya, said in a 1997 story related to a play about Carson that the stabbing incident “really happened.”

3. Protecting white students in high school from rioters: Carson has said that he protected several white students in his Detroit high school from being attacked during riots that followed the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968. Carson said he hid them in a biology lab. The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday that none of a half-dozen of his classmates or Carson’s high-school physics teacher recall the incident. Carson also couldn’t give any of the students' names.

Response: Carson stood by the story and questioned how those students interviewed would know what he had done. “Why would they know about that, unless they were one of those students?” he told Jansing on “Meet the Press” on Sunday. “[M]aybe one of those students will come forward. ... Maybe they’re not spending all of their time reading The Wall Street Journal.”

4. Involvement in nutritional supplement company Mannatech: National Review reported in January that Carson has a relationship with a company that’s been accused of false advertising and exaggerating health benefits of its products. Carson has given four paid speeches to Mannatech and appeared in a promotional video praising the company.

Response: Carson said at the CNBC debate last month: “I didn’t have an involvement with them. That's total propaganda. ... I did a couple of speeches for them. ... They were paid speeches. It is absolutely absurd to say that I had any kind of relationship with them. Do I take the product? Yes, I think it’s a good product.”

5. Being the “most honest” student in a Yale psych class: Carson writes in his autobiography “Gifted Hands” that he once was in a Yale psychology class called Perceptions 301 when the professor asked students to retake a final exam that was much harder than the first test. One hundred fifty students protested by walking out, and Carson was the only student who stayed, Carson writes. The professor gave him a $10 bill for being “the most honest student in the class.” Carson recalls that a Yale Daily News photographer also snapped a picture of him that day. But The Wall Street Journal found no evidence backing up this story, such as the photo in the Yale Daily News or a class by that name.

Response: Carson told George Stephanopoulos on ABC's “This Week” on Sunday: “We found the article from ‘The Yale Daily News’ about the whole scam, so — it wasn’t a scam, it was a parody. ... And the course I guess was called Psychology 1-0. You know, when you write a book with a co-writer and you say that there was a class, a lot of time they’ll put a number or something just to give it more meat. You know, obviously, decades later, I’m not going to remember the course number.” Carson posted the story on Facebook, but the Journal noted that some key details didn’t match up to how he has told the story. Carson’s campaign manager Barry Bennett told the Journal: “The story as he presented it is true. A couple of the details are fuzzy.”

6. Baltimore gun stick-up: Carson told a radio interviewer last month that a man had once held a gun to him at a Popeyes when he was a doctor in Baltimore. “A guy comes in and puts a gun in my ribs. And I just said, ‘I believe that you want the guy behind the counter,’” Carson told the interviewer. But the The Baltimore Sun and Wall Street Journal have reported that the Baltimore Police Department couldn’t find any incident reports matching the story Carson told.

Response: Carson told Sirius XM on Oct. 9: “I can tell you categorically as a God-fearing Christian, it’s something that happened. It’s not something I made up.” His deputy communications director Ying Ma also told CNN: “The incident at Popeyes occurred over 30 years ago. Suggestions that Dr. Carson is lying are outrageous. We will not entertain any further discussion on this issue.”