Snopes the Debunking Site Debunked as Fraud

Snopes, the popular debunking site just got Snoped, or, should I say, debunked. Snopes.com has been considered the 'tell-all final word' on any claim, turns out to be run by a man and a woman with no background in investigation using Google! 

Once, any negative article by them and people would point and say, "See, I told you it wasn't true!" But what is Snopes? What are their methods and training that gives them the authority to decide what is true and what is not? 

For several years people have tried to find out who exactly was behind the website Snopes.com. Only recently did they get to the bottom of it. Are you ready for this? It is run by a husband and wife team - that's right, no big office of investigators scouring public records in Washington, no researchers studying historical stacks in libraries, no team of lawyers reaching a consensus on current caselaw. No, Snopes.com is just a mom-and-pop operation that was started by two people who have absolutely no formal background or experience in investigative research. 

For the past few years www.snopes.com has positioned itself, or  others have  labeled it, as the 'tell all final word' on any comment, claim and email.   But for several years people tried to find out who exactly was behind Snopes.  Only recently  did Wikipedia get to the bottom of it - kinda  makes you wonder what they were hiding.  Well, finally we know. It  is run  by a husband and wife team - that's right, no big office of investigators  and researchers, no team of lawyers.  It's just a small-time husband and wife operation run from their kitchen table. You or I could do the exact same thing from our smartphones!

Starting as a hobby, David and Barbara Mikkelson in the San Fernando Valley of California launched  the Website about 13 years ago. They have no formal background  or  experience in investigative research at all, period.  Though after a few years of gaining  popularity, considering they were believed by all to be unbiased and neutral, after a while people started asking questions who was behind it and did they have  a an alternative agenda?  The reason for the raised skepticism was Snopes claiming to have the bottom line to  certain  questions when in fact they had been proven wrong.  Also,  there  were criticism the Mikkelsons were not  really investigating and getting to  the real bottom of  things on various issues. 

A little while back, when the State Farm agent Bud Gregg in Mandeville hoisted a  political sign referencing Barack Obama and made a big splash across  the  internet, 'supposedly' the Mikkelson's claim to have researched  this issue  before posting their findings on Snopes.  In their statement  they  claimed the corporate office of State Farm pressured Gregg into  taking down  the sign, when in fact nothing of the sort 'ever' took place. In fact, no  one from Snopes ever contacted anyone with State Farm.  Yet, Snopes  issued a statement as the 'final factual word' on the issue as if  they did  all their homework and got to the bottom of things - not!

Then it has been learned the Mikkelson's are jewish - very  Democratic and extremely liberal. There has been much criticism lately over the  internet  with people pointing out the Mikkelson's liberalism revealing itself  in  their website findings.

I suggest anyone who goes to www..snopes.com to get what they think to be the bottom line to 'proceed with extreme caution.'  Take it at face value, nothing more, nothing less.  Use it only to lead you to their  references where you can link to and read the sources for yourself.  You are always better off Googling a subject yourself. When you do the research yourself, you get to know more sources you can come back to for other issues as well. 

I have included a list of proven, time-tested debunking sites you may want to check out. Though you never want to rely entirely on the evidence of a debunking site,they are a good place to start an investigation.




By Tom Retterbush

RESOURCES

Top sites to debunk Internet hoaxes & urban legends
Hoaxbusters- The site has been around a long time (since 1995) and has a good archive but doesn’t seem to be as current as it once was. It is a part of the US Department of Energy - Computer Incident Advisory Capacity (CAIC). Chances are that if you cannot find details of a hoax on one of the other sites, you may be able to find it here. Because it has been around so long there are some dead links. Hoaxbusters also contains a page of links to other hoax sites.
http://hoaxbusters.ciac.org/

TruthOrFiction.com excellent site from Rich Buhler.
http://www.truthorfiction.com/

About Urban Legends- This about.com subsite has been hosted for ten years by David Emery and frankly, he has done a great job. He is passionate about finding and debunking all those rumors, myths, pranks and odd stories. I have found lately that I am referring more people to his site than Snopes because I like the format better. The site also shows up in more Google searches than the others indicating that the content is well linked and used.
http://urbanlegends.about.com/

Break The Chain- In 1999, John Ratliff was annoyed that he kept receiving the same chain spams forwarded to him over and over. I have been just as annoyed for just as long but he did something about it. Like most of these sites, John has plenty of healthy advertisements but no pop-ups. His site is getting more professional looking all the time. He is also frequently cited by the media when looking for an authoritative source on these stupid chain mails.
http://www.breakthechain.org/

Sophos - This anti-virus company keeps a small list of hoaxes and urban legends but it is not nearly as complete as the sites at the top of this list. Their focus is more on virus hoaxes -you know, the ones that scream that you will wipe your hard drive and melt the motherboard if you open the suspect e-mail.
http://www.sophos.com/security/hoaxes/

F-Secure - They claim that their list is comprehensive and the industry standard source for all things hoax related. Don’t believe it. If you click on their list of latest hoaxes you’ll see that it hasn’t been updated for a few years. However, it is still a good list to search if you don’t find what you’re looking for elsewhere.
http://www.f-secure.com/virus-info/hoax/

VMyths- Well referenced by specialists in the computer security field, VMyths takes Internet hoaxes and chain letters to a new level. If you want to read what the real experts have to say about Internet hoaxes, virus scares, myths and legends, get it from Rob Rosenberger at VMyths. Unfortunately, their lists are not comprehensive.
http://www.vmyths.com/

Symantec- I have a love-hate affair with Symantec. I use their products but I’ve been burned by them several times lately. That’s a story for another post. Their hoax list is pretty good but seems a little dated. Maybe that’s because most hoaxes today are really recycled from earlier hoaxes.
http://www.symantec.com/business/security_response/threatexplorer/risks/hoaxes.jsp

Trend Micro - They have improved their list lately with some good updates. I like their style and formatting. Obviously a company that sells AV solutions has a vested interest in keeping their hoax list up to date. Check out their complete list of urban legends. It has some entries that I have not seen elsewhere.
http://www.trendmicro.com/vinfo/hoaxes/

Virus Busters - A short list from the University of Michigan of hoaxes and legends that keep coming back. Like the UofM, I have not seen a lot of new hoaxes lately - they are almost all repackaged oldies. The list is not intended to be comprehensive but is a good reference point for what you will see on a regular basis.
http://virusbusters.itcs.umich.edu/hoaxes.html

I know I’ve missed some of your favorite sites and would like to hear about them. Add yours to the comments so we can all increase our knowledge of what’s out there.



SOURCES

Debunking snopes.com

http://worcesterite.com/forums/general/2008/11/11/debunking-snopescom

Snopes NO MORE The Self-proclaimed Debunker Of Urban Legend has been debunked

http://patriotaction.net/profiles/blog/show?id=2600775%3ABlogPost%3A6105377&xgs=1&xg_source=msg_share_post

Belief in Conspiracies Trivialized by Skeptics

There are skeptics who want to fool you, by attempting to discredit legitimate conspiracies. 

 

Some try to make people who believe in conspiracies look crazy. There are skeptics who have even coined the term, "conspiracy nut" into a joke. They want to convince you that the belief in conspiracies is linked to a Machiavellian Mindset, whatever that means.

However, according to recent polls, most Americans agree that the scenario posed by at least one conspiracy theory is very likely or somewhat likely (see my Conspiracy Watch article The 10 Most Popular Conspiracies). Doesn't this mean that these skeptics are calling the majority of Americans nuts?

Still the skeptics continue to try and make us look like fools. There is even a Skeptics Society, which hosts the laughable Skeptic Magazine Articles Archives, as well as the somewhat more credible UK Skeptics.

The UK Skeptics write on their website, although, "'conspiracy theorist' is generally a pejorative term used to discredit people for having far-fetched beliefs. In reality, however, conspiracy theory is not just just about zany ideas... Conspiracies are real."

UK Skeptics continue, "Conspiracies occur in many walks of life: politics; organized crime; cartels; insider dealing; scams; etc. It is illegal to conspire, therefore conspiracies are usually cloaked in secrecy. This is the cause of the speculative nature of conspiracy theories; it is also the excuse used to mask the lack of evidence in the more bizarre theories.

Conspiracy theories are legitimately used by historians, for example. A conspiracy theory could be postulated based on incomplete evidence; suggestive facts; probability; or even coincidences.

This type of legitimate conspiracy theory is generally accepted as credible, although not proven, as they have some supporting evidence and are based on sound reasoning. A good example from history is the "Princes in the Tower" where historians have identified several likely suspects that may have been behind the plot to murder the princes. None of the theories is claimed to be the truth: they are merely proposed as being likely given the incomplete evidence; each theory having its own strengths and weaknesses.

Valid conspiracy theories are those that are considered plausible. There are many valid conspiracy theories, many of which continuously come under attack from skeptics and those who have something to gain from them becoming discredited.

Though theories such as being controlled by aliens may be unbelievable, theories concerning certain secret societies, government cover-ups, assassinations and many others are undoubtedly true. Still skeptics have lumped all these theories together and termed them "paranoid conspiracy theorists" (PCTs).

The UK Skeptics continues on about "paranoid conspiracy theorists", though Conspiracy Watch has little if anything to do with these theories, since these are based primarily on speculation, having little if any factual evidence to back them.

Another skeptical hack, Tom Jacobs, starts his article, Belief in Conspiracies Linked to Machiavellian Mindset... Know any conspiracy theorists?" No doubt they’ve tried to convince you that man didn’t really land on the moon or President Obama was born in Kenya.”

Jacobs rants on about people who believe in certain conspiracies “…were imparting genuinely interesting information about themselves. New research suggests belief in such theories may reveal a Machiavellian mindset” (Machiavellianism as it turns out, is the tendency to deceive and manipulate others for personal gain).

Jacobs quotes one study in which 189 British undergraduates completed the MACH-IV questionnaire to measure their level of Machiavellianism. This involves expressing one’s level of agreement with a series of statements such as “The best way to handle people is to tell them what they want to hear.” Duh! Tell us something we haven already known all along!

“At least among some samples and for some conspiracy theories, the perception that ‘they did it’ is fueled by the perception that ‘I would do it,’” University of Kent psychologists Karen Douglas and Robbie Sutton write in the British Journal of Social Psychology.

“These studies suggest that people who have more lax personal morality may endorse conspiracy theories to a greater extent because they are, on average, more willing to participate in the conspiracies themselves. 

So let me ask you, my dear reader, since you probably believe in one or more conspiracies (otherwise you would probably not be reading my Conspiracy Watch blog), does this mean you have more lax personal morality?

The reasons people persist in believing conspiracy theories have long been debated by psychologists. One of their theories contends that we are convincing ourselves of conspiracies as to avoid acknowledging the terrifying arbitrariness of life.

British psychologist Patrick Leman noted in New Scientist in 2007, that some conspiracy theories offer us accounts of events that allow us to retain a sense of safety and predictability.

Tom Jacobs is just another skeptic trying to derail evidence of conspiracies that cannot otherwise be explained away. He is just another one of the many that are afraid we might find out the whole truth to what is really going on. Because they are failing to discredit many conspiracies, skeptics have started covering them up to the point that they have become conspirators and "IT" has become a conspiracy in itself!

What is really going on? If you are asking this question, you should consider subsribing to my Conspiracy Watch blog, where I attempt to keep an objective eye on the continuous efforts of our governments, corporations, as well as the New World Order, Illuminati, Freemasons and the Occult to deceive us into giving up our freedom, rights, oh and of course, our money in their ever increasing quest for power and greed for money.

My readers and I would love to read your thoughts on everything and anything conspiracies, so don't be afraid to leave your comment, down bellow.

Written By: Tom Retterbush

The Encyclopedia of Conspiracies and Conspiracy Theories

Conspiracies and conspiracy theories, both documented and undocumented, this volume's 500-plus entries are arranged alphabetically. The selection of topics represents what Newton considers "significant" conspiracy and conspiracy theories--that is, those that affect large numbers of people or inspire widespread interest. The volume contains more than 80 black-and-white photographs. The 200 or so listings in the bibliography are limited to sources published or translated in the English language. 426 pages.
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