And to last a century: people tops. That latent distrust of the government has translated to conspiracies theories about those in charge, such as contrails being made in the sky for nefarious means or suggestions that AIDS was introduced to decimate the African-American population, Radford said. More recently, conspiracy theorists have blamed the Zika outbreak on a public health initiative that released genetically-modified mosquitos , while others have questioned whether government officials intentionally poisoned Flint residents.
They deal with people who are sick. They deal with people who are dying. Grimes doubts his equation will sway the true believers, but hopes it can raise public trust and instill an intuition. Support Provided By: Learn more. Thursday, Nov The Latest. World Agents for Change. Health Long-Term Care. For Teachers. NewsHour Shop. About Feedback Funders Support Jobs. Close Menu. Email Address Subscribe.
What do you think? A study has examined how long alleged conspiracies could "survive" before being revealed - deliberately or unwittingly - to the public at large. Dr David Grimes, from Oxford University, devised an equation to express this, and then applied it to four famous collusions. The work appears in Plos One journal. The equation developed by Dr Grimes, a post-doctoral physicist at Oxford, relied upon three factors: the number of conspirators involved, the amount of time that has passed, and the intrinsic probability of a conspiracy failing.
He then applied his equation to four famous conspiracy theories: The belief that the Moon landing was faked, the belief that climate change is a fraud, the belief that vaccines cause autism, and the belief that pharmaceutical companies have suppressed a cure for cancer.
Dr Grimes's analysis suggests that if these four conspiracies were real, most are very likely to have been revealed as such by now. Specifically, the Moon landing "hoax" would have been revealed in 3. To derive his equation, Dr Grimes began with the Poisson distribution, a common statistical tool that measures the probability of a particular event occurring over a certain amount of time.
Using a handful of assumptions, combined with mathematical deduction, Dr Grimes produced a general, but incomplete, formula. Specifically, he was missing a good estimate for the intrinsic probability of a conspiracy failing.
To determine this, Dr Grimes analysed data from three genuine collusions. Related Stories. The psychology of conspiracy theories Dec 15, Feb 25, Jul 10, The ironclad logic of conspiracy theories and how to break it Oct 06, Oct 01, Oct 03, Recommended for you. When is a 'basin of attraction' like an octopus? Nov 04, Oct 12, Oct 08, New mathematical tools to study opinion dynamics Oct 06, Oct 04, Sep 22, Load comments Let us know if there is a problem with our content.
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