A physicist from Oxford University has calculated that if the four most common conspiracy theories were true, then all the details of these massive secrets would quickly become the property of the general public.
"Based on the results obtained, any conspiracy involving more than a few hundred people quickly collapses, and a truly large-scale conspiracy will never be" stable, "says David Grimes. The formula proposed by Grimes shows that a secret cannot remain a secret for a long time if more than a thousand people are aware of it, and if the conspiracy is to be hidden for more than a century, then the number is even lower - less than 125 people. But the most ambitious conspiracy theories encompass many more imaginary participants.
“It's customary to prove conspiracy theories themselves unfounded,” adds Grimes, “but I decided to approach the matter from a different angle and see how they are possible in principle. And to do that, I looked at secrecy, which is vital to any conspiracy."
To begin with, Grimes calculated the likelihood of uncovering real, proven conspiracies, including the existence of a massive wiretapping and surveillance system organized by the National Security Agency (NSA) and uncovered by Edward Snowden. Another example of this is the infamous Tuskegee syphilis experiments, when hundreds of poor African Americans were infected with a dangerous disease and received dubious penicillin treatment. This case received widespread publicity 25 years later. All this, according to the physicist, shows: conspiracies, of course, can exist, but they do not remain a secret for a long time. How long could the conspiracy theories popular today hold out in secret?
In his work, the scientist turned to four of the most famous and large-scale conspiracy theories. Calculations showed that if the landing of American astronauts on the moon was a lie, then more than 440 thousand NASA employees of that time would have been involved in it, and the secret would not have lasted more than 3.7 years. The secret link between vaccination and autism would remain a mystery for 3.2 to 34.8 years, depending on the number of physicians and pharmacologists involved in this conspiracy. If "global warming is a myth," then this secret would have been revealed in 3.7-26.8 years. Finally, if the pharmacological giants really hide a long-established universal remedy for cancer, then this would remain a mystery for no longer than 3.2 years.
According to Grames, this is also a "positive" scenario for conspiracies, which assumes that the conspirators are good at keeping secrets and no investigation is being conducted against them.
Sergey Vasiliev.
