The Internet’s favorite conspiracies would involve too many people to stay secret, says science

National Post ^ | February 2, 2016 | Abby Ohlheiser

[rickmichaels]

If NASA really faked the moon landing in 1969, about 411,000 people would have worked together to keep that information from the public, and the whole thing would have been exposed about four years later, according to an Oxford researcher who has found a mathematical way to examine the viability of conspiracy theories.

David Robert Grimes is a physicist and cancer researcher, but he also writes science pieces for the Irish Times and the Guardian. As a science writer, he’s used to being contacted by people who adhere to science-based conspiracy theories, which generally involve accusing the scientific community at large of colluding on fake data for nefarious purposes, Oxford University said in a release about Grimes’ new paper, published in PLOS this week.

To help demonstrate the viability (or lack thereof) of several well-known conspiracy theories, Grimes wrote an equation to show just how hard it would be to keep large-scale conspiracies – if they were true – a secret.

“For a conspiracy of even a few thousand actors, intrinsic failure would arise within decades. For hundreds of thousands, such failure would be assured within less than half a decade,” Grimes concluded. In other words: bad news for a lot of the Internet’s most persistent conspiracies.

For instance, more than 440,000 people would have to be working together to fool the public if climate change deniers are correct. Grimes’ equation calculated that such a conspiracy would have been exposed — either by an internal whistleblower or, accidentally — three years and nine months after it began.

[Daffynition]

Quitcherfoolinround and eat. Drink. And be happy. :)

[mowowie]

I have a buddy that is absolutely convinced that the US government flies thousands of planes a day over the country spraying us with Chem Trails.
apparently him and his fellow internet kooks are the only ones that know about this.

[nevergore]

My Grandma firmly believed if it was printed in the newspaper it was real....
Checkout at the grocery when I was little was always fun...

[ChessExpert]

“the AGW ‘conspiracy’ isn’t a conspiracy per se, it is more a groupthink situation.”

Quite right. And it is amplified by massive indoctrination.

[daniel1212]

When you take the “religion” out of the “bible process”, it makes perfect sense that some stuff had to be left on the editing floor.

But like the many men claiming to be of the God of Abraham, that which was of God became established as being such not because of magisterial decree, but progressively over time, without compulsion, essentially due to their heavenly qualities and attestation, like as with true men of God, even despite magisterial opposition. Thus did the NT church begin and continued.