That’s the sound of a zamboni flying low over your head. 
If a story fits in with one’s cherished and stubbornly held world-view, if often doesn’t matter how unreliable the source is, or even if good sources overwhelmingly debunk it.
My favorite recent example comes from an online forum debate about health fraud and involves the website Quackwatch. A quackery apologist was attacking the founder of Quackwatch, Stephen Barrett M.D. as having been “de-licensed”, (in other words, that a regulatory body took away his medical license for some malfeasance or other). This is an untrue smear*, which I took pains to refute (including a link to the Pennsylvania medical board website showing he still holds a medical license in good standing (on inactive status because Barrett is retired). The would-be smearer insisted she didn’t care, that other sources insisted his license had been taken away and that was good enough for her.
*you’ll find this nonsense repeated on alt med websites and by quackery promoters galore, even when they’ve been told it’s a lie.
You made the same mistake I did… He’s parodying birthers with a REALLY fake certificate. Poe’s law, I guess.
It’s funny. I posted that just to be a smart ass. I really didn’t expect anybody to be whooshed. The thread itself is about taking a moment to think when you read something on the net to make sure that it is true. You don’t want to be taking something put on the net by the Onion or the Landover Baptist Church at face value, after all. I thought the link, which was the whole joke, would take care of that. The part of the OP I quoted even said, "make sure the source is somewhat serious.
I guess that didn’t happen here. 
Maybe you should have posted the link naked, like so: http://deathby1000papercuts.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/spoof-obama-birth-certificate.jpg
Kinda sad that even on the SDMB that advice sometimes is appropriate.
No one is ever safe from Poe’s law.
Edit: the “Also he is a US citizen!” is a nice touch.
Yes, I’ve seen that recently. I’m on the e-mail list of a distant cousin who sent me two of those last month. They seemed so unbelivable that I first checked them out on Factcheck and when Factcheck agreed with my common sense, I went to Snopes and they also denied the story. The “verified by Snopes” bit was a bald faced lie.
I find this very BIG LIE like. I have my personal theory about the origin of these things, but I’ll hold until someone else says it.
Well, it’s a funny spoof. I love the Dr. Mike part.
Do a “Reply All” on an email like that. Highlight the fake snopes disclaimer, and announce that that “disclaimer,” when unaccompanied by an actual link to snopes confirming the salient material, will be taken as a sign that it is bullshit.
Then link to the actual snopes article debunking it, just to drive home the point.
You must still believe in Santa Claus if you think that this will have any effect.
Not really.
I DO believe in passive-aggressiveness, though. 
Possibly even more irritating, I got a glurge email that had a quote from Snopes (partial and out of context) that they used to prove their point when the whole article in fact debunked it.
What is your theory? I must not be feeling conspiracy-theoryist enough tonight. 
Yup. Those who want to believe in fairy tales will always find a way.
I found kind of a negative-OP story this morning. The fruitcake Norwegian mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik had his first day in court today. He killed 77 people, many of them children, and he’s claiming self-defense.
AP felt the need to go dig up a Norwegian legal expert on self-defense to refute this. His contribution to the story – “It is obvious that it has nothing to do with preventive self-defense.” Ya think? Seriously, if they’re going to go find somebody with those credentials, at least flesh out some more details with examples of other cases where the defense has been tried and either succeeded or failed. But even more seriously, who the fuck needs an explanation that the claim is total bullshit, other than the jury?
Let’s take a lesson from the Martin/Zimmerman case and wait until all the facts are in before forming any opinions. It’s entirely possible that Breivik was merely following each of the 77 to keep an eye on them—which is his right under the law—and one by one, each of them turned and attacked him, leaving him no choice but to use deadly force. He’s probably as upset as anyone that it had to turn out that way.
Yes, and the building he blew up was also about to lunge at him. 
There’s always this approach to his defense.
Thanks, I’d forgotten that sketch!
“Many people quote Albert Einstein to appear smart.” - William Shakespeare.
“Shakespeare was a prick” – Queen Elizabeth
“Speaking of which, suck on this, woman.” – Francis Bacon