The Burr Conspiracy

Smart Sugar? The Sugar Conspiracy

The Psychology of Conspiracy Theories

What psychological factors drive the popularity of conspiracy theories, which explain important events as secret plots by powerful and malevolent groups? What are the psychological consequences of adopting these theories? We review the current research and find that it answers the first of these questions more thoroughly than the second. Belief in conspiracy theories appears to be driven by mot...

Social Psychological Origins of Conspiracy Theories: The Case of the Jewish Conspiracy Theory in Malaysia

Two studies examined correlates of belief in a Jewish conspiracy theory among Malays in Malaysia, a culture in which state-directed conspiracism as a means of dealing with perceived external and internal threats is widespread. In Study 1, 368 participants from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, completed a novel measure of belief in a Jewish conspiracy theory, along with measures of general conspiracist i...

Conspiracy theories in science.

Conspiracy theories are easy to propagate and difficult to refute. Fortunately, until a decade or so ago, few serious conspiracy theories haunted the natural sciences. More recently, however, conspiracy theories have begun to gain ground and, in some cases, have struck a chord with a public already mistrustful of science and government. Conspiracy theorists—some of them scientifically trained—h...

Sibling Conspiracy Number Search

For some two-player games (e.g. Go), no accurate and inexpensive heuristic is known for evaluating leaves of a search tree. For other games (e.g. chess), a heuristic is known (sum of piece values). For other games (e.g. Hex), only a local heuristic — one that compares children reliably, but nonsiblings poorly — is known (cell voltage drop in the Shannon/Anshelevich electric circuit model). In t...