My 6 month experiment with checking every conspiracy claim through official sources

Back in January I decided to try something different with all the wild claims floating around online. Every time I saw a post about something like chemtrails or FEMA camps, I would spend 15 minutes looking up the actual government documents or scientific studies. After 6 months of this I found that maybe 1 out of 20 claims had any real basis in fact. The rest were either completely made up or twisted from something harmless. What I learned is that most conspiracy theories fall apart when you look at the original sources. Has anyone else tried fact checking these claims systematically and noticed a pattern?

3 comments

3 Comments

allen.charlie1d ago

Well damn, that's a pretty solid track record even for someone who likes to double check things. @margaret_williams5 I had the exact same moment with contrails actually - one clear day I watched a plane go by and saw how the trail spread and hung around for miles, and it hit me that if they were really spraying something they'd be terrible at hiding it compared to how obvious normal exhaust patterns are. Honestly the chemtrail folks must be exhausted from finding new ways to ignore FAA records and basic weather science at this point.

evan_wilson1819d ago

Man I gotta admit, I used to buy into some of that chemtrail stuff pretty hard. I remember watching videos and thinking the government was definitely spraying something nasty. But then I actually looked up the FAA documents about contrails and realized it's just water vapor and exhaust, and the patterns I thought were suspicious were just different planes flying at different altitudes. That whole experience really flipped my thinking around.

margaret_williams518d ago

Did you ever get that feeling where you almost had to talk yourself out of believing it? I was the same way for a while, thought the long lasting ones were proof of something weird. But then I watched a few actually form from start to finish on a clear day and it just clicked that they spread out naturally.