Are Conspiracy Theories Real?

There Are Truly Incredible Claims.

What Does Conspiracy Theory Mean?

A conspiracy theory is an explanation for an event or situation that invokes a conspiracy by sinister and powerful groups, often political in motivation when other explanations are more probable.

The term has a negative connotation, implying that the appeal to a conspiracy is based on prejudice or insufficient evidence.

A conspiracy theory is not the same as a conspiracy; instead, it refers to a hypothesized conspiracy with specific characteristics, such as an opposition to the mainstream consensus among those people (such as scientists or historians) who are qualified to evaluate its accuracy. Source : Wikipedia

Common Characteristics of Conspiracy Theories

Conspiracy theories often contain questionable implications such as:

Most of the time, such claims do not present concrete evidence, but instead, show the connections between the events that they deem logical as evidence.

For example, “Germany profited from this business, so the Germans are behind this business”, etc.

The people or institutions alleged to be involved are assumed to have extraordinary abilities.

In conspiracy theories, it is assumed that the people behind the conspiracy are extremely intelligent and knowledgeable, as well as deceiving or persuading the weak-willed people around them when necessary.

For example, those who spread the information that toothpaste is poisonous also claims that millions of dentists, scientists and officials around the world have been deceived.

These “theories” use complex processes in which many events and/or people come together at the same time as if they were simple developments.

For example, a person who says, “The Americans invented AIDS in the 1960s to control the world population,” would say that at least hundreds of American politicians, soldiers, bureaucrats and scientists would come together and have an extremely serious impact on countries with a rapidly growing population in the world, but which would not harm their own country. He claims to be making complex plans.

It often overlooks the problems that may arise in a plan of this scale.

Conspiracy theories suggest that many people stay silent while all this is going on.

For example, if we believe the theory given in the previous example, millions of innocent people have died all over the world, but even one of the thousands of people who have been aware of this for years has not made a voice to the world.

Oftentimes, conspiracy theories talk about goals such as ruling or taking over an institution, a country, and sometimes even the world.

For example, “The rich banker family named Rothschild has been ruling the world for the last 200-odd years.”

The inductive method is used at the most critical points of the conspiracy theories, but the deductive method is neglected.

In other words, conspiracy theorists reach a certain conclusion by using the events they observe around, but they neglect to go back and verify the conclusion reached by deduction.

For example, in the example we gave in the previous article, the following induction might have been made:

1) The Rothschild family has a lot of money. 2) The candidate with the most money wins the presidential election. 3) It means that the Rothschild family gets the candidate they want elected president.

If the person who proposes this theory cannot explain the same theory with the deductive method, the probability of the theory being wrong increases.

Example,

1) The Rothschild family gets the candidate they want elected president. 2) Barack Obama was president. 3) It means that the Rothschild family elected Obama as president.

Can Conspiracy Theories Be Debunked?

It is very difficult to refute false conspiracy theories for a number of reasons:

First of all, as we mentioned above, many conspiracy theories start with ordinary events with a high probability of happening.

This makes it difficult to refute the conspiracy theory by giving the impression that it is based on facts.

For example, the main argument of those who spread the conspiracy theory that “vaccines cause autism” is Dr It is an article that Andrew Wakefield published in the medical journal The Lancet in 1998, and this article has actually been published.

However, those who still propagate this false theory stated that later scientific experiments disproved this study, that Andrew Wakefield had a financial interest in the results of his study, that his colleagues were withdrawn as a result, that his “Doctor” title was revoked, and that the Lancet magazine pulled the article from publication. they don’t tell.

Contrary to the example above, in some cases, the person who put forward the conspiracy theory has no direct interest in this theory.

For this reason, those who listen to the allegations do not suspect the intention of the person making the theory, which makes the conspiracy theory more convincing.

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