OK, back to Earth Conspiracy theories (CTs) abound. The reptilian plot appears only as one of the more extreme and lunatic versions. Sitting on the outer reach of ghoulish plots, it does not have a large following, according to Joseph Uscinski, associate professor of political science at the University of Miami. “Only 4% of Ameri- cans say that they believe it,” he says. Still, that’s 12.6 million adult Americans, slightly fewer than Ontario’s adult head count of 10.8 million. What connects it to other CTs is that it is one of a number of


enduring “one-world fascist government” not-so-secret plans being hatched by the “Illuminati,” the “New World Order” and the “Elders of Zion Protocols” conspiracies. The New World Order conspiracy seems to be the primary


all-encompassing world enslavement offensive. In his 1991 bestselling book The New World Order, televangelist Pat Robert- son knotted together the many branches of this ghastly plot in which, among other organizations, Wall Street, the Federal Re- serve System, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Bilderberg Group and the Trilateral Commission create and manage world events, such as wars and economic crises, in order to submit hu- manity to a planetary dictatorship dedicated to the Antichrist. Unlike Icke’s reptilian conspiracy, most CTs are not interstel-


lar or even planetary in scope. Most are rather more prosaic and regional, such as the assassination of President John F. Ken- nedy, probably the all-time favourite. “It seems more popular than ever,” says Nicolas Fillion, a professor of philosophy at BC’s Simon Fraser University who teaches a class on conspiracy theories. In the United States, “a little more than 50% of people think


that JFK’s assassination was not the solitary act of Oswald,” re- ports Fillion. A 2012 national poll that questioned people about four conspiracy theories “found that 63 percent of respondents believed at least one,” write Uscinski and Joseph M. Parent in their book American Conspiracy Theories. The business world also has its share of conspiracy theories.


One that went around in the 1990s and early 2000s claimed that the oil industry had suppressed an invention to make cars run on simple water, its inventor purportedly kidnapped by Exxon. There is no serious evidence that any car can run on water — this violates everything we know about physics — but some cars can run on hydrogen and oxygen combining in a fuel cell to produce electricity, with water as a harmless byproduct. This is probably the source of the crazy water-run car conspiracy myth.


Rationality redux Believers in conspiracy theories abound. Prevalent views on the subject of “conspirationists” posit that such people are some- what mentally or psychologically handicapped. Should one conclude then that 63% of Americans are in some way mentally unsound? Research involving millions of conspiracy posts on a conspir-


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acy website, and to which Fillion refers, finds that conspiration- ists are “extremely mindful of backing their plots with evidence and argument,” he notes. “Their beliefs are based on facts: we can’t say that of many people.” The problem is “that we get our analyses back to front,” says


Matthew R.X. Dentith, a fellow of the Institute for Research in the Humanities at the University of Bucharest, and author of The Philosophy of Conspiracy Theories. Since most of the litera- ture on conspiracy theories starts out with the idea that belief in them is irrational, he writes, “we have to find reasons as to why conspiracy theorists are acting irrationally.” More recent treatments of the subject try to cleanse away


biases. For example, Karen Douglas, professor of social psychol- ogy at Kent University, England, defines conspiracy theory quite aseptically as “an alleged plot by secret and powerful groups to achieve a malicious goal.” That allows us to paint the conspiracy theory crowd in broad


strokes. Thus many categories of US citizen fit in: men as well as women, Democrats as well as Republicans, whites as well as blacks. There are common traits: they tend to be “poor in terms of formal education and money,” write Uscinski and Parent, less likely to participate politically and more accepting of vio- lence. “On the whole, they appear to deserve their reputation as outsiders.” (Sixty-three percent makes “outsiders” a majority.) Conspiracy theory theorists, such as Fillion and Dentith,


only look at the issue in epistemological terms. “It’s a theory [or a hypothesis], which can be right or wrong, just as in sci- ence,” says Fillion. One famous way to distinguish science from pseudoscience, put forward by the great philosopher of science Sir Karl Popper, is “falsifiability.” A scientific theory must have testable conditions in which it can be demonstrated as false. “Irrefutability is not a virtue of a theory [as people oſten think] but a vice,” wrote Popper. So, is Elizabeth II a reptilian high priestess of the Babylonian Brotherhood? This is impossible to falsify to a true believer be- cause it is not testable. So it’s not scientific, and most likely un- true. Did the CIA conspire to carry out nasty drug experiments to test mind control methods for more than 20 years? Seem- ingly unlikely, but falsifiable — and true. The MKUltra Project, first regarded as a conspiracy theory, was recognized as a real project in which the CIA experimented with LSD to extract deep confessions from unsuspecting subjects such as prisoners and psychiatric patients, and closed down in 1975.


Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Banker Some conspiracy theories float in a gray realm of partial truth and partial delusion. The story behind the creation of the Fed- eral Reserve is an eloquent example and follows a splendid conspiracy line. In 1910, on Jekyll Island — that’s right, Jekyll Island — a highly secretive gathering of six power players from finance and government met at its resort club, including rep- resentatives of John Pierpont Morgan, “at the time, the un-


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