Conspiracy Thread, feel free to contribute or debunk

[larry badiner]

Since the inception of modern genetical research, there is a chance that "people" (foreign governments, domestic governments) are tainting the gene pool with undesirable traits in cannabis

Intelligence Agencies keep a library of Cannabis genetics

These same Intelligence Agencies keep a library of plants that are secret, and/or hard to obtain, with effects that are extraordinary

These are just theories, I have no actual proof


Anyone else have any conspiracy theories?

 

[CosmicGiggle]

No, but thanks for asking

 

[Rocky Mtn Squid]

RMS

 

[St. Phatty]

View Image

RMS

That's why I don't like Alex Jones. In a lot of his webcasts around 2007 to 2011, he tended to over-state a lot of things. Scare people, get them hyper-ventilating.


Only the facts & the uncertainty that goes with some of them, that's plenty of news.


Why spend one brain cycle thinking about conspiracy theory when there are so many conspiracy Facts to sort out ?

Of course it's not like the US gov will explain all the pieces of the puzzle. That means learning to be comfortable with conspiracy facts, and pieces of the History iceberg remaining underwater.


As an example of theory, I don't think Rudolf Diesel killed himself. The evidence is 100 years old and has been eaten by fish, and crapped out, then eaten by crabs, so many times, it's safe to say it has no evidentiary value.

 

[Water-]

Hypothesis vs. Theory.

A hypothesis is either a suggested explanation for an observable phenomenon, or a reasoned prediction of a possible causal correlation among multiple phenomena.

In science, a theory is a tested, well-substantiated, unifying explanation for a set of verified, proven factors.

 

[Ibechillin]

Science and history are manipulated by a higher ruling, be it monetary or political. Plenty of researchers in the world with more greed (or fear) than integrity.

 

[Stoner4Life]

conspiracy theories = bullshit.

not happy with some part of life, blame others en masse.

 

[Gypsy Nirvana]

Out on a salvage mission on these here intrawebs - I came across this article of interest to this thread about the origins of 'Conspiracy Theorist'.

Nope, It Was Always Already Wrong
The Conspiracy Guy
Robert Blaskiewicz
August 8, 2013

Recently, the claim that the phrase “conspiracy theory” was popularized in the 1960s by the CIA to discredit those who dared to question the Warren Commission has been popping up in the conspiracy-o-sphere. From the original PsyOp, so the story goes, the application of the phrase spread to encompass all sorts of nefarious doings, and now people reflexively think that all conspiracy theorists are crazy. The first version that I heard, in fact, was the claim that the term was actually invented in the 1960s, and that grabbed my attention. Really? Never appeared before the 1960s?

An infuriating feature of conspiracy theory is its propensity to take the standard of evidence that skeptics value so highly and turn it on its head: extraordinary claims no longer require extraordinary evidence; rather an extraordinary lack of evidence is thought to validate the extraordinariness of the conspiracy. It is thinking just gone wrong. Worse still, disconfirming evidence becomes evidence in favor of the conspiracy. I strongly suspect that the “the phrase ‘conspiracy theory’ was invented by the CIA” gambit is a fairly radical extension of this tendency, that the mere fact that so many people recognize that conspiracy theorizing is a futile and intellectually unproductive exercise is only more proof to the conspiracy theorists that they are really onto something.

As evidence of this deliberate manipulation of language, theorists offer up a 1967 document released in 1976 via a FOIA request, Dispatch 1035-960. In short, the CIA document outlines arguments that field operatives can use to counter conspiracy theorizing abroad and advises where those arguments might have the largest effect. The document was released to the New York Times, but conspiracy theorists’ seizure of this notion, that what they do has been deliberately stigmatized by nefarious outside agents rather than by the internal flaws of their arguments, ignores both linguistic and historical reality in order to flatter their delusions.

While the notion that the phrase “conspiracy theory” was weaponized has been around since at least 1997, it recently received a boost by the Lance deHaven-Smith’s 2013 Conspiracy Theory in America, published by the University of Texas Press. So, with this stamp of apparent academic legitimacy (I have my own opinion about that, and this is not the venue to elaborate), conspiracy theorists have begun citing this work as an authority.

Take for example the recent article by Kevin Barrett, “New studies: ‘Conspiracy theorists’ sane; government dupes crazy, hostile,” which was republished at Before It’s News as “CIA Invention of the Phrase, ‘Conspiracy Theory’ to Block Questions on JFK’s Assassination, is ‘One of the Most Successful Propaganda Initiatives of All Time.’” Barrett’s arguments were well and truly destroyed by the rogues on the July 27 Skeptics Guide to the Universe, so I will not rehash the staggering lapses in critical thinking they employ. But Barrett also leans very hard on deHaven-Smith’s work:

Both of these findings are amplified in the new book Conspiracy Theory in America by political scientist Lance deHaven-Smith, published earlier this year by the University of Texas Press. Professor deHaven-Smith explains why people don’t like being called “conspiracy theorists”: The term was invented and put into wide circulation by the CIA to smear and defame people questioning the JFK assassination! “The CIA’s campaign to popularize the term ‘conspiracy theory’ and make conspiracy belief a target of ridicule and hostility must be credited, unfortunately, with being one of the most successful propaganda initiatives of all time.” [emphasis added]

Well, we have a claim of fact about the origins of the term “conspiracy theorist.” This is certainly something we can check up on. I will not ascribe this claim to deHaven-Smith. I don’t recall him making the claim that it was invented by the CIA, only that it was deliberately deployed by the CIA.

A quick search of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) finds that the phrase had been used in May 1964:

New Statesman 1 May 694/2 Conspiracy theorists will be disappointed by the absence of a dogmatic introduction.

This is two years before Dispatch 1035-960 appeared. If you go to the magazine, you will find that this sentence appears in an unsigned editorial, “Separateness,” about the London Magazine’s recent transition from being an exclusively literary publication to a more interdisciplinary review of the arts.

So, no. The CIA did not invent the word “conspiracy theorist.” But this made me wonder how far back I could push the use of a term like “conspiracy theory.” Using the OED to date vocabulary is a dodgy proposition. The oldest example you are likely to find in an OED definition is unlikely to be the first time the word was used. It might not even be the first time that the word was written down. It just happens to be the oldest example that the dictionary’s lexicographers have found. Nonetheless, we’ll use the OED as a starting point and just be confident that the word has to be at least as old as the first example found there.

The earliest appearance of “conspiracy theory’ in the OED goes as far back as 1909 to an article from the American Historical Review:

Amer. Hist. Rev. 14 836 The claim that Atchison was the originator of the repeal may be termed a recrudescence of the conspiracy theory first asserted by Colonel John A. Parker of Virginia in 1880.

This sentence appears in Allen Johnson’s review of P. Ormon Ray’s The Repeal of the Missouri Compromise: Its Origin and Authorship. The sentence that follows it makes quite clear that the phrase is being used in the modern sense: “No new manuscript material has been found to support the theory, but the available bits of evidence have been collated carefully in this volume” (836).

While the OED is generally considered to be a standard reference work, you can actually push the date back even farther using a more recently developed tool, Google Books. Conspiracy theory is by far the older term. In May 1890, a theosophical journal called The Path dismissed the 1885 exposure of Helena Blavatsky by the Society for Psychical Research, in which it was discovered that Blavatsky relied on an elaborate system of informants for her “psychic” insights, as a “conspiracy theory.” In 1881, the phrase appears in Rhodes’ Journal of Banking: “As evidence of a conspiracy this showing is pitiful, and in any view, the charge is ridiculous, as no conspiracy theory is needed to account for the facts.” It seems that finance has always been dogged by conspiracy theories.

An even older reference to “conspiracy theory” can be found in the medical literature of 1870, during a public debate about the growth of asylums and the treatment of inmates in the UK. At issue were bruises and broken ribs that patients acquired in the asylums; were these the result of accidental self-injury, perhaps a byproduct of methods of restraint, or were these punitive measures or even preventive measures meant to force compliance? It’s not clear what the result of that debate was, but according to research by Ian A. Burney, it pitted the Lancet against The Journal of Mental Science. Novelist and prison/asylum reform activist Charles Reade wrote to the editors of the Pall Mall Gazette about the methods of control used in asylums in January 1870, which he came upon researching a novel about private asylums, Hard Cash. Reade claimed his evidence was a “[...] higher class of evidence than the official inquirers permit themselves to hear. They rely too much on medical attendants and other servants of an asylum, whose interest it is to veil ugly truths and sprinkle hells with rose-water.” (19) This evidence was the testimony of former patients and former keepers:

The ex-keepers were all agreed in this—that the keepers know how to break a patient’s bones without bruising the skin; and the doctors have been duped again and again by them. To put it in my own words, the bent knees, big bluntish bones, and clothed, can be applied with terrible force, yet not leave their mark upon the skin of the victim. The refractory patient is thrown down and the keeper walks up and down him on his knees, and even jumps on his body, knees downwards, until he is completely cowed. Should a bone or two be broken in this process, it does not much matter to the keeper: a lunatic complaining of internal injury is not listen to. (19)

The Journal of Mental Science, replied to these allegations the following month:

It must, I think, be admitted that the difficulties have been real, or surely they would not have evoked such an extreme hypothesis as that advanced in the Pall Mall Gazette, by a well-known novelist—an hypothesis which seems to involve every element of the sensational novel. (139)

In a comparison of Reade’s hypothesis to another one, the journal remarked:

The theory of Dr. Sankey as to the manner in which these injuries to the chest occurred in asylums deserved our careful attention. It was at least more plausible that [sic] the conspiracy theory of Mr. Charles Reade [...]. (141)

This use of conspiracy theory, I think, is recognizable with our contemporary understanding.

What is clear is that “conspiracy theory” has always been a disparaging term. While proponents of alternative knowledge are correct in asserting that it is possible to unfairly discredit someone by calling them a “conspiracy theorist,” they must also remember that just because you are called a conspiracy theorist doesn’t mean you aren’t one.

Robert Blaskiewicz
Bob Blaskiewicz is Assistant Professor of Critical Thinking and First Year Studies at Stockton University, where he specializes in and teaches about World War II veterans’ writings, science and pseudoscience, extraordinary/paranormal claims and conspiracy theory. He is the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry’s “Conspiracy Guy” web columnist, a blogger at skepticalhumanities.com, a regular panelist on the live weekly web show The Virtual Skeptics (Wed 8PM Eastern), and contributes a monthly essay to the Skepticality podcast. He also works with an elite cadre of skeptical superheros on The OTHER Burzynski Patient Group website, The Houston Cancer Quack page, and the Skeptics for the Protection of Cancer Patients Facebook group.

https://www.csicop.org/specialarticles/show/nope_it_was_always_already_wrong

 

[MJPassion]

Hypothesis vs. Theory.

A hypothesis is either a suggested explanation for an observable phenomenon, or a reasoned prediction of a possible causal correlation among multiple phenomena.

In science, a theory is a tested, well-substantiated, unifying explanation for a set of verified, proven factors.

When was the last time you picked up a dictionary?


Theory has NOTHING to do with proven facts!
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/theory

 

[beta]

Here's my contribution: If it's a 'conspiracy theory' it is not supported by evidence BY DEFINITION.

Because of this, conspiracy theories are indistinguishable from pure fiction.

 

[geneva_sativa]

the definitions of terms is fun and all, I'm sure...

but any version of an event that is not officially endorsed by the people in power, is usually labeled as a conspiracy theory or a similar term,,, even if factual...


those who think there is no control of the media by these people in positions of power, are blind to history, and not able, or willing to seek the facts for themselves...

 

[Water-]

When was the last time you picked up a dictionary?


Theory has NOTHING to do with proven facts!
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/theory

sorry to bore people with this but for sake of clarity:

You are reffering to the casual usage of the words while I was reffering the use of the terms in scientific investigation of "truth".

from your chosen dictionary:

https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/difference-between-hypothesis-and-theory-usage

"THIS IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN HYPOTHESIS AND THEORY,

IN SCIENTIFIC REASONING THEY ARE TWO COMPLETELY DIFFERENT THINGS."


"In scientific reasoning, a hypothesis is constructed before any applicable research has been done. A theory, on the other hand, is supported by evidence: it's a principle formed as an attempt to explain things that have already been substantiated by data."


A hypothesis is an assumption, something proposed for the sake of argument so that it can be tested to see if it might be true.

In the scientific method, the hypothesis is constructed before any applicable research has been done, apart from a basic background review. You ask a question, read up on what has been studied before, and then form a hypothesis.

A HYPOTHESIS is usually tentative, an assumption or suggestion made strictly for the objective of being tested.

When a character which has been lost in a breed, reappears after a great number of generations, the most probable hypothesis is, not that the offspring suddenly takes after an ancestor some hundred generations distant, but that in each successive generation there has been a tendency to reproduce the character in question, which at last, under unknown favourable conditions, gains an ascendancy.
Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species, 1859

According to one widely reported hypothesis, cell-phone transmissions were disrupting the bees' navigational abilities. (Few experts took the cell-phone conjecture seriously; as one scientist said to me, "If that were the case, Dave Hackenberg's hives would have been dead a long time ago.")
Elizabeth Kolbert, The New Yorker, 6 Aug. 2007


A THEORY, in contrast, is a principle that has been formed as an attempt to explain things that have already been substantiated by data. It is used in the names of a number of principles accepted in the scientific community, such as the Big Bang Theory. Because of the rigors of experimentation and control, its likelihood as truth is much higher than that of a hypothesis.

It is evident, on our theory, that coasts merely fringed by reefs cannot have subsided to any perceptible amount; and therefore they must, since the growth of their corals, either have remained stationary or have been upheaved. Now, it is remarkable how generally it can be shown, by the presence of upraised organic remains, that the fringed islands have been elevated: and so far, this is indirect evidence in favour of our theory.
Charles Darwin, The Voyage of the Beagle, 1839

An example of a fundamental principle in physics, first proposed by Galileo in 1632 and extended by Einstein in 1905, is the following: All observers traveling at constant velocity relative to one another, should witness identical laws of nature. From this principle, Einstein derived his theory of special relativity.
Alan Lightman, Harper's, December 2011."

 

[Absolem]

Gravity is a theory. And within that theory are many laws.




Edit:
This is not a "conspiracy theory" but in support for the post above.

 

[Mengsk]

There is a sense of the winning side writing the history books here. Whether it be cold war or political argument or some of what is outlined above, a majority of press is decidedly in one direction or of one belief. This might be an oversimplification but I've heard it said before that most textbooks for US schools are printed in Texas. Which means the political story or argument that was/is distributed to all fifty states, is really only one (person/party/side's) side or point of view.

A real world example for me is a certain website which I have followed for years relating to all kinds of health stuff for soil and humans and pets. Years ago I might have viewed some of the stories or guides as alternative or something different from what has been considered standard science or ag or medicine. It fills a void or area where someone who does not trust doctors or is looking for a second or third opinion can go. I can't remember old examples but an herbal tincture instead of antibiotics for an ear infection, something like that. It sounds weird to many people but if it works it works. I did not think of any of it as "quack" or "snake oil," but I did not necessarily subscribe to 100% of it either at the time. Now years later revisiting the website, a lot of it is new. Whether it is new material or my point of view changing I am not entirely sure, but now today to me the website looks real, or factually correct, "legit." This puts webmd or stanford in an awkward spot since they are traditionally the group who has absolutely rejected alternative medicine like it is a fight to the death. So ignorance is still the best case scenario for defence, meaning that "the way" or the medical establishment has set up quite a system for itself where poking holes is difficult. There's a fine line discussing freedom of choice when ag and pharma and more like chains of stores and real estate are all conglomerated. It also has to do with control of information or controlling the media or spreading propaganda. Ten thousand flyers with a person's face has an effect whether it is good bad whatever. Under the "Nutrition Plan" I agree with their pyramid only I prefer plant protein.

 

[Gry]

Since the inception of modern genetical research, there is a chance that "people" (foreign governments, domestic governments) are tainting the gene pool with undesirable traits in cannabis

Intelligence Agencies keep a library of Cannabis genetics

These same Intelligence Agencies keep a library of plants that are secret, and/or hard to obtain, with effects that are extraordinary

These are just theories, I have no actual proof
Look into Al Hubbard.

Deeper you go, the better it gets.


Anyone else have any conspiracy theories?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_MKUltra#Other_drugs

Experiments on humans were intended to identify and develop drugs and procedures to be used in interrogations in order to weaken the individual and force confessions through mind control. The project was organized through the Office of Scientific Intelligence of the CIA and coordinated with the U.S. Army Biological Warfare Laboratories.[2] The operation was officially sanctioned in 1953, was reduced in scope in 1964, further curtailed in 1967, and recorded to be halted in 1973. There remains controversy over whether this operation ever ended, or continues presently
The world is often smaller than one may think.
Al Hubbard. Deeper you look, the more interesting it gets.