What's your favorite science (or other) conspiracy theory?

While it may not be *that* common, my favorite Colorado-related conspiracy theory is the one about the lizard people who live under DIA and steal children, or any of the other conspiracy theories associated with DIA. I first heard about the lizard people from a cousin in Alaska who wanted me to check out the DIA artwork for signs of where the lizard people might keep the children they steal. I blogged about it once on a now-defunct blog and had at least 12 comments from people who claimed to have seen the tunnels that the lizard people used. When I invited them to show me, no one took me up on the offer. Meanwhile, though, librarians collect these, you know--hoax websites. For example: http://www.avdistrict.org/library/eval.html
My favorite is the DHMO site at http://www.dhmo.org/ In my high school class this semester, I avoided the hoax sites and demonstrated simple Google searches for Hitler and Clovis people. The latter search brings up a Crystalinks site. We examined the root website. I tracked down a phrase from her site, and that quote was apparently from an old USGS site--no credit given, no copyright infringed, but still not cited. The Hitler search made it easy to show bias; Crystalinks demonstrates the concept of authority (and also provides a good object lesson in how Google ranks sites and why Wikipedia usually ends up as the first search option). Can you tell I'm a librarian?

Moon landing hoax...

Face/City on Mars...

Paul is dead (If Ringo dies next, that will become a very ironic rumor)...

Earth has a twin orbiting at L3...

Math is hard...

Eggs stand only in equinoxes

"dark side" of the moon

science sucks ^_^

perpetual motion machines

this is from math, but: squaring the circle

dust is mostly from flaked skin

eight second rule

bottled water is better than tap water

E=mc^3 (and other crank physics)

2012 apocalypse

planet x destroy the world theory

UFO=alien

etc etc etc

The success of the computer is that he can be driven to his rhythm. They take time tone to read, relire, understand, note. Surtout on channel-flicks. They change more quickly site on Internet than chains on television. Because Internet is not always so direct as on the television.

Le succès de l'ordinateur est qu'il peut être conduit à son rythme. On prend le temps de lire, relire, comprendre, noter. Surtout on zappe. On change plus vite de site sur internet que de chaînes à la télévision. Parce que internet n'est pas toujours autant en direct comme à la télé.

Technically, that the moon doesn't exist, but that site is not actually serious (might fool them, though). Unified field theory, aliens building or giving us instructions to build the pyramids. Atlantis-related theories.

There are also the shapechanging lizard people that kill and replace our world leaders, and that are protected by the Illuminati. I read about it in Paranoia magazine!

What about the "expanding Earth" idea (subduction denialism)?
Or (low-hanging fruit): Hallettestoneion Sea Zoria Dragons ... http://hszoria.com/

You might trawl through Martin Gardner's Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science, or maybe make that one of the books for the class to read. It's available from Dover, so not very expensive.

For more crackpottery ...

Water circling down the drain one way north of the equator, going the other way south of the equator.

Try skepdic.com for a ton of screwball ideas and well researched explanations.

Dowsing, homeopathy, maybe that whole healing crystals thing (apparently a favorite topic at gem and Mineral Shows). Anything about Atlantis and the Nazca lines is good too.

If you're looking for a book to use, I'd recommend "Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science" by Martin Gardner. It's a bit older, but it talks about lots of the above suggestions in detail. It was reading for a seminar I took on pseudoscience, and I really enjoyed it.

I do a critical thinking course every now and then. Here are some useful websites about evaluating sources, which is key in getting them to understand about pseudoscience/conspiracy theories. Many of them don't understand that authors have biases!

http://owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/research/r_evalsource5.html
http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/instruct/guides/evaluation.html
http://www.wikihow.com/Evaluate-the-Credibility-of-a-Source
http://library.duke.edu/services/instruction/libraryguide/evalwebpages…

My list would overlap a lot with many already given so I'll only add one:

Crowd demons.

There is a comic book writer named Neal Adams who has made a whole (expensive) series of DVDs who claims scientists are covering up a big secret: that the earth is actually expanding in diameter or something. He has no scientific training, which he claims gives him an advantage over those trained as scientists because he isn't brainwashed like we are. He has all kinds of bizarre ideas about plate tectonics and erosion and whatnot and has animations showing how the earth will really change as it grows evermore large. He also uses freebies like the William Tell for it... my only qualms about sharing this loopy guy's claims is that bringing it up with your students may bring more attention on this guy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjgidAICoQI

String Theory :)

The Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus. Not a conspiracy theory as such, but it's a lovely site. They have some pictures of our cephalopodic friend. (http://zapatopi.net/treeoctopus/)

Does anyone promote earthquake prediction online?

That the modern American school system post-Dewey, was designed to create a docile worker population, rather than encourage critical thinking and citizens who are willing to challenge authority.

Dinosaurs co-existing with humans?

These are two geocentric earth web sites. They use the Biblical text that states that the earth is fixed, hence it must be the center of the universe. These sites assert that there is a conspiracy to avoid the Truth.

http://www.fixedearth.com/

http://www.staticearth.net/index.html

We had a ball with this for a while. (http://www.nmsr.org/Archive.html) Caught a few big fish, too.

See http://www.nmsr.org/april_fool.html for the complete explanation.

Applied kinesiology.
Quantum homeopathy.

This, is the craziest conspiracy theory ever.

The whole thing is here: http://www.cryptomundo.com/cryptozoo-news/racism-09/

The following email arrived yesterday. It was horrible to read, as it was sent in all seriousness, with an invitation to receive other supporting âdocuments.â The basic nature of the communication shows an underside of our culture that many of us hoped was long gone.

The film that Roger Patterson made in 1967 in California of Bigfoot is real. Here is what Bigfoot is. Long before Jesus was born there were thousands of slaves who ran off around the world and started their own countries. When they left there was a large group of men and boys who took off and ended up in Africa. When they got to Africa some of these men and boys caught female Orangutans and took them over to South America and had sex with them and created the American Indian.

The men and boys who stayed in Africa caught female Gorillas and had sex with them and created the Black man. When scientists found the bones they thought we evolved from a female Chimpanzee. But it wasnât a natural evolution it was a man made evolution. Thatâs where Bigfoot, Sasquatch, Yeti, Orangutan man and the Skunk Ape comes from. They are half man and half Gorilla and half man and half Orangutan. They use to call the American Indian the red man. The Orangutan has redish or orange hair. When those men bred out the hair the Indianâs skin remained red. The Gorilla has black hair and skin.

When those men bred out the hair the Black manâs skin remained black. They are not prehistoric creatures from millions of years ago but they are man made creatures from several thousand years ago. The creature that Roger Patterson filmed in 1967 was half man and half Gorilla. There is no such thing as a natural evolution.

A good dressing down of the email follows, but still... some people are something else...

Black-Eyed Kids, aka BEKs.

Googling BEKs is endlessly entertaining. I've been following them off and on since the obvious hoax Usenet post about 12 years ago, which has since triggered endless speculation and requests for personal stories from credulists, stories which are then duly supplied by confabulists and FOAFs, feeding the cycle.

It's very marginal, fringe-paranormal stuff -- it's a bit like the MIB stuff was in the 1950s before it took off as a pop-culture phenomenon.

How about the whole "aliens built [insert pre-Columbian site here]", e.g. Machu Picchu.

As far as bad geology is concerned, the expanding Earth and abiotic oil hypotheses both have significant internet support. They might be good places to start.

One of the most well-developed and plausible ones is Oxfordianism, which says that Edward de Vere wrote all of the plays traditionally attributed to William Shakespeare. It's viewed as an outlier opinion in literary academia, but some powerful people believe it, including Supreme Court Justice Stevens.

Wiki

One of the most well-developed and even plausible ones is Oxfordianism, which holds that Edward de Vere wrote the plays traditionally attributed to William Shakespeare. It's viewed as an outlier opinion in literary academia, but some powerful people believe it, including Supreme Court Justice Stevens.

Useful to remember that before DNA, the idea -- the VERY IDEA -- that Thomas Jefferson might have fathered his slave's children was totally dismissed. There are still some diehards out there, but most of Jefferson's own long-acknowledged descendants accept the reality of it now.

Mitochondrial DNA testing of bones found in a swamp proved the truth or untruth of stories that had circulated nearly a century about the fate of the Russian royals.

Legends had circulated over a thousand years about the history of the Khazars, a tribe in the Caucasus. Were they Jews or not? DNA tells a very interesting story, leading to the revision (or addition of additional chapters) to books like Arthur Koestler's The Thirteenth Tribe.

There's the ongoing hoohah about the descendants of Jesus. Are they the Sinclairs/St.Clairs or not? What's the story of Roslin Chapel? The whole DaVinci code thing.

For other Bible scholars, the existence of the "cohen" Y chromosome seems to support stories that have circulated thousands of years.

The moon landing, JFK and Diana's death.

I had to share this with you - a real reponse to a homework assignment about air pollution:
"What evidence exists to prove that Carbon Dioxide is a pollutant? Carbon Dioxide is no more associated with âglobal warmingâ (hoax) than is water vapor."

To which I said, " I understand that you may not agree with the textbook. However, you are to use the textbook as the reference for your assignments. Grades will be issued
based on your ability to read, understand, and write about the information in the textbook."

Got a better suggestion?

"russian demokracy"

Pseudoscience AND conspiracy theories, all in one:
Ancient astronauts

I'd steer clear Quantum Homeopathy (Lynne Mctaggart and other gurus) as a previous commentator suggested as those are pretty transparently marketing pitches.

However related to that and more specificaly a scientific conspiracy theory I'd nominate the MMR Vaccination scare. There are numerous sources on both sides and it's not as obviously ludicrous as the others that have been suggested. You don't have to know much about science to point out the flaws in the Hollow Earth argument but the MMR Scare and it's resulting conspiracy theories are much more subtle.