Conspiracy Theories can Be Explained by Mathematical Formula

BEACON TRANSCRIPT – A physicist working for the Oxford University was able to explain how conspiracy theories work and what happens to them after they are released. According to his paper’s conclusions, all conspiracy theories can be explained by a mathematical formula, which takes into accounts three major factors.

We all know that all major events like the Moon landing or 9/11 have and had different effects on the collective way of thinking. While most of us would hail the Moon landing as the apex of human development or regard the events surrounding 9/11 as tragedies provoked by distressed individuals, there those who tend to see some kind of conspiracy behind all of them.

Jet fuel can’t melt steel beams or the moon landing couldn’t be achieved due to the fact that no human being could have survived the Van Allen radiation belt are just some of the conspiracy theories looming on the internet.

A physicist from Harvard wanted to see what the reasons behind conspiracy theories were. Doctor David Grimes is a physicist working at the Oxford University. The veteran scientists managed to develop a mathematical equation which can potentially show how conspiracy theories are formed and how long they can survive.

Grimes declared that when he created this equation he applied the same principles used in radiation physics. To yield results, the mathematical formula must take into account three major factors: how many conspirators are involved in conspiracy theory, how much time has passed from the event and what the probability of a theory to fail is.

To see if the equation can predict the half-life of conspiracy theories, Grimes test it on four examples of theories: the Moon landing, the erroneous presumption that climate change is not true, autism is actually caused by vaccines and that pharmaceutical companies are withholding the cure for cancer.

Applying his equation to the four conspiracy theories the physicists from Oxford University obtained the following results. According to calculation, it seems that 3.7 years passed since the Moon landing until someone called it a hoax.

As for the other cases, 3.7 to 26.8 years would pass before unveiling that climate change is not true, 3.2 to 34.8 years for vaccines cause autism and 3.2 for pharmaceutical companies withholding the cure to cancer.

In calculating the probability of a conspiracy theory failing, Grimes used the Poisson distribution, a mathematical formula mainly used to calculate the frequency of an event over a period of times.

In conclusion, David Grimes was able to demonstrate that conspiracy theories can be explained by a mathematical formula and that these events have a certain periodicity.

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