
Maths study shows conspiracies 'prone to unravelling' - rogeryu
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-35411684
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rogeryu
The research examines how long alleged conspiracies could "survive" before
being revealed - deliberately or unwittingly - to the public at large.

Dr David Grimes, from Oxford University, devised an equation to express this,
and then applied it to four famous collusions.

The equation developed by Dr Grimes, a post-doctoral physicist at Oxford,
relied upon three factors: the number of conspirators involved, the amount of
time that has passed, and the intrinsic probability of a conspiracy failing.

He then applied his equation to four famous conspiracy theories: The belief
that the Moon landing was faked, the belief that climate change is a fraud,
the belief that vaccines cause autism, and the belief that pharmaceutical
companies have suppressed a cure for cancer.

Dr Grimes's analysis suggests that if these four conspiracies were real, most
are very likely to have been revealed as such by now.

