Misinformation conspiracy

One of the biggest problems faced by anyone trying to understand what is happening in the World is the sheer volume of often conflicting, and at times completely opposing sets of information described as facts. As an example, depending on which media outlet you favour you could today have been told that genetically modified food is perfectly safe, and at the same time is not safe at all. Both can not be right, what with them being mutually exclusive. So how do you establish what information is correct and what is not? The first step in this process is establishing an understanding that there are very view absolute facts, and even fewer truths. This is the case whether the source of information is official, say a government, or completely unofficial, like an internet chatroom. There are a number of reasons for this and it is probably worth spending a few moments thinking about some of them. Firstly, the World that we live in is tremendously complex, and in many fields we have yet to develop a complete understanding. If we take a subject such as climate change there are wide discrepancies between the conclusions reached by scientists using the same data. In part this is a consequence of an incomplete understanding of the way in which the global climate operates. It is a similar story with conclusions about the global economy for broadly similar reasons.

Secondly the information and data that is available to be analysed is often not complete. A goof example of this was the analysis that was used to justify UK and US involvement in the invasion of Iraq. Data that had been gathered suggested that the Iraqi leadership had access to weapons of mass destruction, but it transpired that this data was incomplete, and in fact had been manipulated. Then we have the problem of personal agenda. In the majority of cases data is analysed by human operators, and as the poet said, to err is human. Not only can and do mistakes happen, but personal opinions and beliefs can also have an effect both in the way data is analysed but also in the way it is presented. A recent example of this was the presentation of data relating to tax avoidance schemes by UK based corporate businesses. One of the HMRC tax officials involved in the case was married to a senior accountant within a corporate structure. Consequently this official presented the data in such a way as to suggest that it was a minor oversight rather than active fraud.

You can begin to see that getting to the heart of what is going on around the World can be quite difficult, but does this mean that everything that goes on that may not be completely above board is a part of a conspiracy? I would suggest not, but finding out whether there is something more to uncover or not can be done. The first step is to follow the money. Does an individual, or organisation stand to directly gain from a conspiratorial plot? Then you can look towards a motive for conspiracy. What reason could there be for a conspiracy? It could be secrecy, protecting individuals, groups or nations. It may be because it is easier than revealing the truth, or revealing a lack of knowledge. If there is a clear benefit, and a strong motive it is almost certainly worth investigating further and trying to find whether or not that cover up you found is really a conspiracy or just basic human stupidity. Either way, finding out is worth the effort.