I have a problem with considering the Tuskeegee Experiments to be a conspiracy theory proven as a conspiracy. Its publications, data and findings were avaialble throughout the study.
That it was an utter moral failing was another matter, but it was no secret hush-hush conspiracy.
Yeah, no doubt GM tried but stuff like the Red Cars were doomed without their “conspiring” . I rode the last of those when I was a kid, they traveled so slow you could just jump on in many places and thus no one paid fares. As your cite sez"“Recent journalistic revisitings question that the alleged conspirators had a significant impact on the decline of the streetcar system, suggesting rather that they were setting themselves up to take advantage of the decline as it occurred. Guy Span suggested that Snell and others fell into simplistic conspiracy theory thinking, bordering on paranoid delusions[5]…GM Killed the Red cars in Los Angeles".[81] In reality, Pacific Electric Railway (who operated the ‘red cars’) was hemorrhaging routes as traffic congestion got much worse with growing prosperity and car ownership levels after the end of World War II, long before 1953.[86]”
So, yeah, there was a 'conspiracy" but it was hardly the mass effective thing it has been portrayed as, and it was just a few companies trying to get rid of the competition. meh- the dollar fine was about right.
So yeah, a few little conspiracies, limited in scope- sure. But no biggies.
It personally works for me. I remember when the NSA was building their giant Utah data center (around 2008 or so?), and a couple CT-leaning friends told me the government was indiscriminately spying on the entire internet. Now, I could sympathize with them, as this wasn’t too long after the AT&T wiretapping story broke, but I just couldn’t comprehend the magnitude of what the NSA was doing.
“Do you realize how much data that entails?” “Hence the giant data center.”
“Do you know how many people would have to stay quiet?” “It’s classified information, lots of government projects have stayed secret for decades.”
“Then how do you know about it?” “Well, it’s kind of obvious, isn’t it? Big data center, NSA, Patriot act, the terrorism boogey man, it all just follows from their known MO and this new data center construction”
“Do you know how much noise is in that signal? How could a dragnet of the entire internet even be useful? There’s not enough people in the world to sort through all that garbage.” “Hey, I didn’t say they were smart, just that they’re doing it.”
The whole thing sounded like loony 9/11 truther stuff, to me. Not the fact that they were spying, just the sheer audacity of intercepting the entire internet, day in, day out, for no other reason than the technology finally allowed them to.
And Snowden eventually proved those conspiracy theorists right.
The Big Tobacco conspiracy. Many people thought tobacco was harmful but the big tobacco companies kept denying it and putting out false information.
Hell doctors even used to recommendcertain cigarettes.
How 'bout the oil companies knowing about global warming thirty years ago?
It’s an interesting one because the conspiracy theories predate the conspiracy. There were people paranoid about government interception of messages on the Internet back in the early 90s, before Internet access was even commercially available. I always thought that they were paranoid loons. Then Snowden happened…
We’ve known about Global Warming for longer than that. Shoot, it gets a mention in the movie Soylent Green which was made 42 years ago. We just didn’t take it seriously until we started seeing evidence in the late 80’s.
“Although the doctors in these advertisements were always actors and not real physicians, the image of the physician permeated cigarette ads for the next two and a half decades.”
No conspiracy - but dubious surveys and sleazy advertising (including in major medical journals, at least up until the early 1950s) taking advantage of many physicians not fully realizing the harmful effects of smoking before the 1964 Surgeon General’s report.
Asbestos being banned for use as a building material, being reinstated, and again under attack.
I give up. What’s the conspiracy? What’s the theory?
The first time it was banned (in the US) in the 60’s to 70’s they blamed the lumber/forestry block. Then in the 90’s it was cleared to be used again as long as it was bonded permanently in concrete or some other substance (has always been the case, methinks.) Now health people are at it again.
That’s a gigantic public front page issue. How is it a conspiracy? What’s the theory? Seriously, in what way does it belong with birthers and truthers and moon hoaxers?
Excellent point.
I’ll grant ya those things don’t meet the concept of conspiracy theory as defined in your link, but they do seem to meet the two criteria in the OP.
Except for maybe quantum physics, which is more just plain wacky than conspiracy.
None have been proven false.
Some of those are rather interesting.
#23 – Kennedy Assassination. E. Howard Hunt confessed to involvement on his deathbed. George de Mohrenschildt blew his brains out the night before he was scheduled to testify before Congress.
#19 – Operation Snow White. Some time during the 1970s, the Church of Scientology massively infiltrated U.S. government agencies, wiretapping and burglarizing.
#16 – The Business Plot. In 1933, group of wealthy businessmen allegedly including George H.W. Bush’s father planned a coup against FDR.
Some seem unlikely:
#30 – The Illuminati. …The Rothschild dynasty owns roughly half of the world’s wealth.
Has it ever been proven that you’re not a child molester and serial killer?
Never had a trial so no. Let me know how yours turns out.
I’m rubber and you’re glue
Conspiracy Theories are like brain-eating cockroaches. They pollute from the inside out and must be stomped until they are dead, dead, dead. And where there is one there is normally many more.
Believing that every event you don’t like is part of a conspiracy leads is a recipe for societal disaster. It leads to threads like this one, merely the latest of a million others. Conspiracy Theories aren’t merely stupid and annoying. They’re actively harmful.