Susan A. Nolan, Ph.D., a professor of psychology atSeton Hall University, was kind enough to walkBored Pandathrough the differences between valid claims and conspiracy theories. She also explained why some people believe in the latter theories. Scroll down for her insights.
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The McDonalds PR machine tried to ruin Stella Liebeck’s life. That coffee was so hot it melted her clothing to her genitals. People still believe she was at fault. I turn it around and ask how they’d feel if a parent accidentally spilled coffee on their child that was so hot it melted the child’s clothes to her/his body. Somehow it usually wakes people up.
Ernest Hemingway suffered from ongoing paranoia that the FBI were surveilling him, which was thought to be a key factor in him [taking his own life]. Most chalked it up to mental illness at the time. Decades later, his file was released, proving he was under investigation for his ties to Cuba, his phones were tapped, and he was right all along.
“The difference between a valid, or even potentially valid, claim and a conspiracy theory comes down to the willingness to consider evidence,“Professor Nolan, who co-runs the’Misinformation Desk' blogon Psychology Today, explained to Bored Panda via email.
“On the other hand, there are some weird facts out there that do have evidence backing them. Research has found that swearing can reduce the experience of pain. Also, cats and dogs are left- or right-handed (or left- or right-pawed) just like humans.”
According toNolan, people often want to believe in non-existent conspiracies because they give them some sense of control. Especially in scary or uncertain situations. We don’t need to look deep into the past to see this at work, either. A glance at what happened in recent years is enough.
“For example, during the COVID-19 pandemic, especially early on, conspiracy theories gave some people a sense that there were solid answers. The science was shifting a lot early on—because that is how science works—so conspiracy theories might have felt more certain to some people,” the professor explained.
In the spring of 1968 President Lyndon Johnson shocked the nation when he announced that he would not seek election to a second full term that November. He gave no explanation, and pretty much everyone assumed that it was because of the situation in Vietnam and his resulting unpopularity.While Vietnam undoubtedly was a factor it was far from the full story. Concerned that males in his family tended to die young, and having barely survived a heart attack in the 1950’s, sometime in 1967 Johnson had commissioned a top-secret actuarial study to determine his likely lifespan.After carefully going through his family history and medical records, the actuaries concluded that Johnson was unlikely to survive to age 65. Johnson quickly did the math and realized that would give him a very short retirement if he ran and won in 1968, as he’d be 64 at the end of the term. This led him to decide against running.The actuaries were right, as Johnson never made it to 65, dying at age 64. And indeed it would have been a very short retirement: had he served a second full term he would have died less than 24 hours after the end of the term.
There’s a psychological reaction called “The Backfire Effect” which essentially means that people, after they’re given proof that what they think they know is absolutely wrong, will believe their misconception/misinformation even more deeply.
The Church of Scientology had members secretly infiltrate US Government agencies in order to destroy unfavorable documents and investigations into them
It can be quite a challenge to determine what is and isn’t a conspiracy theory. During aprevious interviewwith Bored Panda,Steven Wooding, a member of the Omni Calculator Project and a member of the Insitute of Physics in the UK, explained to us how someone might go about evaluating a theory or a claim. The first step is to use fact-checking services, like PolitiFact.com and FactCheck.org.“I think that while reading the news every day, we should never forget that the world is a complicated place. The events that occur are usually the result of multiple processes rather than a single cause,” Wooding explained.According to the scientist, reality is often quite complicated. Monocausal, or single cause, factors in political, social, or historical change are rare.
It can be quite a challenge to determine what is and isn’t a conspiracy theory. During aprevious interviewwith Bored Panda,Steven Wooding, a member of the Omni Calculator Project and a member of the Insitute of Physics in the UK, explained to us how someone might go about evaluating a theory or a claim. The first step is to use fact-checking services, like PolitiFact.com and FactCheck.org.
“I think that while reading the news every day, we should never forget that the world is a complicated place. The events that occur are usually the result of multiple processes rather than a single cause,” Wooding explained.
According to the scientist, reality is often quite complicated. Monocausal, or single cause, factors in political, social, or historical change are rare.
There are government built bunkers dotted around the U.S. That hold a total of 1.4 billion pounds of cheese. The government was buying excess milk to prop up the dairy industry, turning it into cheese and shoving under ground since the end of prohibition up until the Regan administration. The Got Milk ad campaign was a government funded “psyop” to get Americans to consume more dairy I sound like a f*****g crazy person but it’s real.
“If a theory explaining an aspect of reality has monocausal tendencies (or even shamelessly presents itself as monocausal), it is highly likely to be wrong. We should develop a habit of thinking about this every time we hear a theory supposed to explain some ‘hidden truth’ to us. Then, if you think to yourself, ‘Wow, that sounds pretty monocausal!'—it’s a sign you should do your research,” Wooding said.
“They present (at least at first) a clear and lucid vision of the world—often based on Manichean [good vs. evil] opposition. They give the false impression of thoroughly understanding and explaining the world in a simple way.”
The same company that single-handedly caused the opioid crisis is… still making money off of their drug but now also making money off of its antidote.
In the United States between 1932 and 1972, the CDC intentionally neglected to inform hundreds of black Americans that they were infected with syphilis. The goal was to study the effects of syphilis in black people when left untreated, meaning it was imperative that the patient be unaware that they were infected. Many of them died to the untreated illness.
The sugar industry paid nutrition researchers to blame fats for health problems that were often correlated to sugar consumption. From this we have all the nonsense about “good fats”/“bad fats” etc.
He added: “Studies prove that people who believe in one conspiracy theory are much more likely to believe in another. In this sense, I think that every conspiracy theory is wrong. They differ only in scale, but they are all part of the same mechanism.“According toLee McIntyre, a Research Fellow at the Center for Philosophy and History of Science at Boston University, when talking to someone who believes in a conspiracy theory (e.g. Flat Earth), you should ask them what evidence they think would be enough to prove them wrong.“I used that question in person at FEIC [Flat Earth International Conference] 2018 and it was very telling. Most of them just said ‘proof’ and I said ‘proof of what?’ They couldn’t be specific. This shows that their beliefs weren’t really based on evidence in the first place,”the expert told Bored Pandaduring an interview, earlier.
He added: “Studies prove that people who believe in one conspiracy theory are much more likely to believe in another. In this sense, I think that every conspiracy theory is wrong. They differ only in scale, but they are all part of the same mechanism.”
According toLee McIntyre, a Research Fellow at the Center for Philosophy and History of Science at Boston University, when talking to someone who believes in a conspiracy theory (e.g. Flat Earth), you should ask them what evidence they think would be enough to prove them wrong.
“I used that question in person at FEIC [Flat Earth International Conference] 2018 and it was very telling. Most of them just said ‘proof’ and I said ‘proof of what?’ They couldn’t be specific. This shows that their beliefs weren’t really based on evidence in the first place,”the expert told Bored Pandaduring an interview, earlier.
That companies make stuff that easily breaks or soon won’t work on purpose so you have to buy more. Planned obsolescence.
Government Surveillance: Whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed in 2013 that the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) was conducting mass surveillance on citizens, collecting data from internet communications, phone calls, and other sources.
ALCOHOL POISONING DURING PROHIBITIONAs you know, in 1919, the manufacture, sale and transportation of alcohol was prohibited. But instead of plummeting, alcohol sales soared. Speakeasies opened everywhere, and as a result, people in some neighborhoods were drinking even more than before. The mafias got in on the act, stealing large quantities of industrial alcohol.In 1926, the authorities resorted to the hard way, asking manufacturers to add toxic substances to their alcohol (adding ten times more methanol, for example). In New York alone, 1,200 drinkers were poisoned and 400 died. A wave of deaths would eventually sweep across the country. This “poisoning policy” was not stopped until December 1933.
“At one session I heard many Flat Earthers talk about losing family members, getting kicked out of their churches, losing jobs… who would do that for fun? These are hardcore science deniers. As hard as it might be to accept, there are people who believe this stuff and are willing even to put their lives on the line for it! One rocket guy crashed trying to prove Flat Earth. They aren’t pretending,” McIntyre told Bored Panda.
The pentagon has never been able to account for more than half its budget.
The quinoa craze in America had devastating effects on Bolivia. Bolivian farmers switched to growing quinoa to export to the US because it was much more profitable than other staple foods. As a result (along with various other factors), Bolivia has really poor food security for its own people.
See Also on Bored Panda
Conspiracy theories can be considered to be “infectious”: they go viral, in order to attract new members.
Everyone, even from Roman times, knew asbestos was bad for your health. Same with lead.There are no old lead miners.
Statistically, nuclear power is safer than solar, wind, coal, and gas power.
In 2/3 of all US states, EMS is NOT considered an essential service. As such it recieves next to 0 gov funding or support
How big tobacco companies denied the health risks of smoking, despite internal knowledge of the dangers.
That morgues are hesitant to hire men because of the things they’ve historically done to the corpses.
JFK’s brain was removed during autopsy and stored in an archive. Its current whereabouts are unknown.
A cartel run out of Switzerland got all the top light bulb manufacturers to limit bulb life to 1000 hours so that they could sell more. [phoebus cartel]
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Oil, rubber, and car companies influenced government agencies to pull funding from public transit and focus more on policies favoring the use of private vehicles. That’s why public transit is poor in so many places in the US that had far more robust transit systems in the first half of the 20th century. White flight and redlining also contributed to this, drastically increasing the size of unwalkable suburban areas and languishing cities.
COINTELPRO is straight up conspiracy theory sounding, but 10000% true. They even sent letters to MLK telling him to commit suicide. No wonder people believe that the US government is probably doing other shady s**t, because they probably are.
Humans used to visit the moon, then we just stopped
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