5 Times Scientists Tackled Conspiracy Theories, and Won
By Nathaniel Scharping | August 16, 2016 1:20 pm
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Conspiracy theories are something of a plague for scientists: no matter how much research is done on some topics, a vocal minority will insist that the facts just aren’t true.
So it’s gone for vaccines, climate change and 9/11, and so it will go on, in all likelihood. In some cases, it may be best to simply ignore the conspiracy agitators, but, as a 2010 article in EMBO Reports points out, some of the biggest scandals start out looking very much like outlandish conspiracy theories—the Watergate scandal in the 1970s, for example.
Perhaps the best attitude toward conspiracies is to follow the advice popularized by Carl Sagan: “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.”
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/2016/08/16/5-times-scientists-tackled-conspiracy-theories/#.V8I2YDXDHvR
