Jovan Byford, The Open University Anyone who engages critically with the phenomenon of conspiracy theories soon encounters a conundrum. Actual conspiracies occur quite regularly. Political assassinations, scandals and cover-ups, terrorist attacks and a lot of everyday government activity involves the collusion of multiple people in the attempt to bring about a desired outcome.
Category Archives: Science
How to spot bogus science stories and read the news like a scientist
Doug Specht, University of Westminster and Julio Gimenez, University of Westminster When fake news, misreporting and alternative facts are everywhere, reading the news can be a challenge. Not only is there plenty of misinformation about the coronavirus pandemic, climate change and other scientific topics floating around social media, you also need to read science stories, […]
Pseudoscience is taking over social media – and putting us all at risk
Santosh Vijaykumar, Northumbria University, Newcastle Search for “climate change” on YouTube and before long you’ll likely find a video that denies it exists. In fact, when it comes to shaping the online conversation around climate change, a new study suggests that deniers and conspiracy theorists might hold an edge over those believing in science. Researchers […]
An organized collection of irrational nonsense (v. 5.0) – an amazing diagram
An organizational collection of irrational nonsense (previously known as the“Venn diagram of irrational nonsense”) v. 5.0. A complete list of irrational bullshit.
Demonising processed food undermines our trust in science
Alan Kelly, University College Cork I have a radical suggestion: let’s ban processed and ultra-processed foods. Not the products, but the terms.
A quantum computing future is unlikely, due to random hardware errors
Subhash Kak, Oklahoma State University Google announced this fall to much fanfare that it had demonstrated “quantum supremacy” – that is, it performed a specific quantum computation far faster than the best classical computers could achieve. IBM promptly critiqued the claim, saying that its own classical supercomputer could perform the computation at nearly the same […]
What Einstein meant by ‘God does not play dice’
‘The theory produces a good deal but hardly brings us closer to the secret of the Old One,’ wrote Albert Einstein in December 1926. ‘I am at all events convinced that He does not play dice.’ Einstein was responding to a letter from the German physicist Max Born. The heart of the new theory of […]
Believing without evidence is always morally wrong
You have probably never heard of William Kingdon Clifford. He is not in the pantheon of great philosophers – perhaps because his life was cut short at the age of 33 – but I cannot think of anyone whose ideas are more relevant for our interconnected, AI-driven, digital age. This might seem strange given that […]
Why urban legends are more powerful than ever
Neil Dagnall, Manchester Metropolitan University and Ken Drinkwater, Manchester Metropolitan University Have you heard the one about the guy who went on holiday to Bolivia? You know, he went on a night out and randomly woke up in an ice-filled bathtub after someone had removed his kidney and harvested it for sale. You probably have […]
5 milestones that created the Internet, 50 years after the first network message
Scott Shackelford, Indiana University Fifty years ago, a UCLA computer science professor and his student sent the first message over the predecessor to the internet, a network called ARPANET.