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?

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.

A fact, by definition is something that is indisputable, as @Robusto said.

Consider though, if somebody presents a piece of information as fact, believing it to be so, but then are proven incorrect. Then what they thought a fact would be incorrect.

Still, I wouldn't say that the claim was an 'incorrect fact' because once the opposing evidence is given, the information ceases to be a fact.

I suppose then, we should say that it is 'erroneous information' rather than 'an incorrect fact'.

Your concern is based on the "primary" definition of "fact": a verified piece of information. There are however other definitions, and one other common definition is "an alleged piece of information." As Wikipedia notes, this second definition is commonly used despite disputes:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fact

Wikipedia cites: According to the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, "Fact has a long history of usage in the sense 'allegation'" AHD_4th_Ed. The OED dates this use to 1729.