Recently Updated
Theories updated or fact-checked in the last 30 days — reflecting new evidence, revised verdicts, and editorial improvements.
- Government & PoliticsDebunked
Boston Marathon Bombing False-Flag Claims
The false claim that the April 15, 2013 Boston Marathon bombing was staged by the US government or involved "crisis actors" rather than being conducted by the Tsarnaev brothers. The real bombing killed 3 people and injured 260+.
Apr 25, 2026fact-checked - Government & PoliticsDebunked
Pizzagate
The false claim that a child sex-trafficking ring linked to Democratic Party officials operated out of Comet Ping Pong pizzeria in Washington DC, based on misreadings of John Podesta's hacked 2016 emails.
Apr 29, 2026fact-checked - Health & MedicineDebunked
Ivermectin as COVID-19 Cure
The claim that the antiparasitic drug ivermectin is an effective COVID-19 treatment being suppressed by pharmaceutical companies, regulators, and hospitals to protect vaccine profits.
Apr 29, 2026fact-checked - Government & PoliticsDebunked
Sandy Hook False Flag Claims
The false claim, most prominently promoted by Alex Jones and Infowars, that the December 14, 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Connecticut was staged by "crisis actors" to justify gun control legislation. The shooting killed 20 first-graders and 6 adults.
Apr 27, 2026fact-checked - Government & PoliticsDebunked
QAnon
A sprawling conspiracy movement originating on 4chan and 8chan in October 2017, centered on anonymous "Q" posts alleging that a cabal of Satan-worshipping pedophile elites controls government, media, and finance, and that Donald Trump is leading a secret war to expose them.
Apr 27, 2026fact-checked - Government & PoliticsDebunked
Pelosi Attack October 2022 Narrative
On October 28, 2022, David DePape broke into the San Francisco home of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and attacked her husband Paul Pelosi with a hammer. Within hours, several right-wing figures including Elon Musk and Donald Trump Jr. circulated alternative framings suggesting the attack was staged, a sexual encounter gone wrong, or that glass in the door was broken from the inside by Paul Pelosi himself. San Francisco Police body-camera footage, a federal indictment, the SF District Attorney's filings, DePape's own trial testimony, and a unanimous federal jury conviction in May 2024 all contradict these narratives.
May 8, 2026fact-checked - Government & PoliticsDebunked
9/11 Truth Movement
A loose coalition of researchers and activists who reject the official account of the September 11, 2001 attacks, alleging government foreknowledge, controlled demolition of the World Trade Center, or a staged Pentagon strike.
May 6, 2026fact-checked - Health & MedicineDebunked
WHO Pandemic Agreement Sovereignty Claims
Claims that WHO pandemic agreements or International Health Regulations let the WHO directly override national sovereignty, impose lockdowns, or control citizens.
May 6, 2026fact-checked - Government & PoliticsDebunked
White House Correspondents' Dinner Shooting Staged Claims
Claims that the April 2026 White House Correspondents' Dinner shooting was staged or allowed to happen for political advantage.
May 6, 2026fact-checked - Health & MedicineDebunked
Adrenochrome Harvesting
A claim, amplified heavily by QAnon from 2017 onward, that global elites harvest a compound called adrenochrome from the blood of frightened children and consume it as a psychoactive drug or life-extension substance. Adrenochrome is a real, commercially available compound (oxidised adrenaline) with no credible evidence of psychoactive properties or significant physiological effect at any plausible dose. The claim recycles antisemitic blood-libel tropes with a modern pseudo-scientific veneer.
May 6, 2026fact-checked - Health & MedicineDebunked
mRNA Vaccine Shedding Claims
Claims that vaccinated people shed harmful spike proteins or mRNA in ways that sicken nearby unvaccinated people.
May 6, 2026fact-checked - Government & PoliticsDebunked
Reptilian Elites (David Icke)
The claim, popularized by British writer David Icke from 1999 onward, that a race of shape-shifting reptilian humanoids from Alpha Draconis secretly rule the Earth by posing as political and royal elites including the British Royal Family.
Apr 27, 2026fact-checked - Government & PoliticsDebunked
2020 Election and Dominion Voting Claims
Claims that Dominion voting machines or coordinated ballot fraud changed the 2020 US presidential election outcome.
May 6, 2026fact-checked - Government & PoliticsDebunked
Saddam Hussein - Al-Qaeda Link (Iraq War Pretext)
The Bush administration's 2002-2003 claim that Saddam Hussein's Iraq had operational ties to al-Qaeda, used as a central justification for the 2003 US invasion. The 9/11 Commission, Senate Intelligence Committee reports, and a 2006 Pentagon IG report all concluded no such operational relationship existed.
Apr 25, 2026fact-checked - Government & PoliticsDebunked
Gaza October 7 False Flag Claims
On 7 October 2023 Hamas launched a large-scale attack from Gaza into southern Israel, killing approximately 1,200 people and taking roughly 250 hostage. Hamas publicly claimed responsibility. Three distinct conspiracy sub-claims have circulated: (1) Israel had advance warning and deliberately allowed the attack; (2) Israeli casualty figures were fabricated or exaggerated; (3) Israel staged or orchestrated the attack. The first reflects documented intelligence failures with an unverified "deliberate stand-down" extrapolation. The second is contradicted by forensic documentation from multiple international teams. The third is directly contradicted by Hamas's own public claims of responsibility and captured combatant evidence.
May 7, 2026fact-checked - Health & MedicineDebunked
CIA AIDS Origin Theory
The claim, promoted by Soviet KGB disinformation Operation Denver/INFEKTION (1983-1987) and subsequent circulation, that HIV/AIDS was created by the US CIA or US Army Fort Detrick biological weapons program.
Apr 27, 2026fact-checked - Health & MedicineDebunked
Raw Milk Cure Claims
Claims that raw milk cures disease or is being suppressed because it outperforms medicine.
May 6, 2026fact-checked - Health & MedicineDebunked
Turbo Cancer Claims
Claims that COVID vaccination causes sudden aggressive cancers at population scale.
May 6, 2026fact-checked - Health & MedicineDebunked
School Vaccine-Exemption Misinformation Claims
Claims that school vaccine policies are illegal experiments, depopulation tools, or proof of hidden medical control.
May 6, 2026fact-checked - Health & MedicineDebunked
Fertility and Contraception Conspiracy Claims
Claims that contraception, vaccines, or reproductive medicine are covert fertility-control programs.
May 6, 2026fact-checked - Science & EnvironmentDebunked
Directed-Energy Wildfire Claims
Claims that wildfires are caused by directed-energy weapons rather than weather, fuel, power lines, arson, or climate conditions.
May 6, 2026fact-checked - Government & PoliticsDebunked
Election Ballot-Destruction Claims
Claims that ballots are routinely destroyed, dumped, or manufactured to alter election outcomes.
May 6, 2026fact-checked - Government & PoliticsDebunked
Noncitizen Mass-Voting Fraud Claims
Claims that large-scale noncitizen voting changes U.S. election outcomes.
May 6, 2026fact-checked - Health & MedicineDebunked
AIDS Denialism
Claims that HIV does not cause AIDS or that antiretroviral therapy is the real cause of AIDS.
May 6, 2026fact-checked - Science & EnvironmentDebunked
Maui Wildfire Land-Grab Claims
Claims that the Maui/Lahaina wildfires were deliberately caused or exploited as a coordinated land-grab operation.
May 6, 2026fact-checked - Health & MedicineDebunked
Medbeds and Miracle Technology Cures
Claims that secret medical beds can cure severe disease but are hidden by elites or awaiting disclosure.
May 6, 2026fact-checked - Health & MedicineDebunked
MMR Vaccine-Autism Link
The false claim that the MMR vaccine causes autism, originating in a fraudulent 1998 study by Andrew Wakefield published in The Lancet, which the journal formally retracted in 2010 after investigation revealed data manipulation and undisclosed financial conflicts.
Apr 27, 2026fact-checked - Science & EnvironmentDebunked
Hurricane and Weather-Control Claims
Claims that governments steer or intensify hurricanes using HAARP, cloud seeding, or secret atmospheric technology.
May 6, 2026fact-checked - Health & MedicineDebunked
COVID Vaccine Depopulation Claims
Claims that COVID-19 vaccines were designed to kill, sterilize, or depopulate recipients.
May 6, 2026fact-checked - Health & MedicineDebunked
Parasite Cleanse Cure Networks
Claims that hidden parasites cause broad illness and can be cured by detox or cleanse protocols.
May 6, 2026fact-checked - Health & MedicineDebunked
Died Suddenly Documentary Claims
Claims popularized by the film Died Suddenly that vaccines caused mass unexplained deaths and fibrous clots.
May 6, 2026fact-checked - History & Ancient CivilizationsDebunked
Protocols of the Elders of Zion
A fabricated antisemitic text, first published in Russia in 1903, claiming to document a Jewish plan for world domination. Extensively proven a forgery — plagiarized from Maurice Joly's 1864 Dialogue aux enfers entre Machiavel et Montesquieu (a satire about Napoleon III, not Jews).
Apr 27, 2026fact-checked - Health & MedicineDebunked
Bleach/MMS Detox Cure Networks
Networks promoting chlorine dioxide or MMS as a detox, autism treatment, infection cure, or cancer cure.
May 6, 2026fact-checked - Science & EnvironmentDebunked
5G Health Claims
The claim that 5G cellular technology causes harm to human health — cancer, COVID-19 infection, or population control — popularized during COVID-19 pandemic and amplified by social media.
Apr 23, 2026fact-checked - Health & MedicineDebunked
Autism False Causes and Cures
Claims that autism is caused by disproven exposures and can be cured by unproven or dangerous treatments.
May 6, 2026fact-checked - Government & PoliticsDebunked
Clinton Body Count Claims
Claims that Bill and Hillary Clinton arranged suspicious deaths of political associates and witnesses.
May 6, 2026fact-checked - Government & PoliticsDebunked
January 6 FBI False-Flag Claims
Claims that FBI agents or informants orchestrated the January 6 attack rather than participants who planned and executed it.
May 6, 2026fact-checked - Technology & SurveillanceDebunked
Crisis Event AI Hoax Claims
Claims that real crisis footage, victims, or witnesses are AI-generated fabrications.
May 6, 2026fact-checked - Health & MedicineDebunked
Bill Gates Depopulation Claims
A persistent cluster of claims links Bill Gates to depopulation or eugenics agendas, most commonly by citing his 2010 TED talk in which he discussed the relationship between healthcare, reproductive services, carbon emissions, and global population growth. In its most common form, the claim misrepresents Gates's actual argument: that improving healthcare and education in developing countries historically correlates with declining birth rates (demographic transition theory). The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's published focus areas — vaccines, maternal health, agricultural productivity — are oriented toward reducing child mortality and improving living conditions, not population reduction. More extreme variants allege Gates Foundation vaccines are covertly designed as depopulation tools; this framing carries antisemitic-adjacent structural patterns that the ADL has documented. All variants have been repeatedly fact-checked as false or unsupported by Reuters, AP, and Politifact.
May 8, 2026fact-checked - Government & PoliticsDebunked
Las Vegas Route 91 Shooting Conspiracy Claims
The October 1, 2017 mass shooting at the Route 91 Harvest country music festival in Las Vegas, which killed 60 and wounded over 400 — the deadliest mass shooting in modern US history. Various conspiracy theories claim multiple shooters, ISIS involvement, MGM/security cover-up, or government-directed false-flag operations.
Apr 25, 2026fact-checked - Health & MedicineDebunked
5G Health and COVID Claims
Claims that 5G networks cause COVID-19, immune collapse, or hidden illness patterns.
May 6, 2026fact-checked - Technology & SurveillanceDebunked
AI-Generated Disaster Survivor Hoaxes
Claims that real disaster survivors, victims, or witnesses are AI-generated fabrications, often based on compression artifacts or synthetic-media panic.
May 6, 2026fact-checked - Technology & SurveillanceConfirmed
Section 230 platform-immunity debate (1996-present)
Section 230(c)(1) of the Communications Decency Act 1996 provides that no provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider. Drafted by Reps. Christopher Cox and Ron Wyden as a response to Stratton Oakmont v Prodigy (1995), it has since shielded Meta, Google, and X from liability for user-generated content. Critics — from the Knight First Amendment Institute to House Energy and Commerce Committee — argue the immunity is overbroad and enables platform censorship; defenders counter that removing it would chill free expression and destroy small platforms. Trump EO 13925 (28 May 2020) directed a review; it was revoked 21 January 2021. The Supreme Court dismissed federal-government censorship-collusion claims in Murthy v Missouri (26 June 2024) for lack of standing. The 'conspiracy' framing here is the claim that Big Tech lobbied to entrench and expand Section 230 to achieve permanent, unaccountable censorship power.
May 13, 2026fact-checked - Technology & SurveillancePartially True
Meta/Facebook knowledge of Cambridge Analytica before Mar 2018 (2015-18)
Facebook discovered in December 2015 that Aleksandr Kogan's 'thisisyourdigitallife' app had harvested data from approximately 87 million users and transferred it to SCL Group/Cambridge Analytica. Facebook contacted Cambridge Analytica, obtained certifications of data deletion, and did not notify affected users. Internal documents produced in the 2018 FTC investigation showed Facebook had identified the policy enforcement gap but treated it as resolved by the deletion certifications. Christopher Wylie's whistleblower disclosures to the New York Times and The Guardian (17 March 2018) revealed that the data had not been deleted. Facebook paid a $5 billion FTC settlement (24 July 2019) and a $100 million SEC fine. The claim that Facebook knowingly concealed this data harvest from regulators and users is partially supported by the documentary record.
May 13, 2026fact-checked - Technology & SurveillanceUnsubstantiated
AI existential risk / 'AI doomer' debate (2014-present)
The claim that artificial intelligence poses an existential or catastrophic risk to humanity has been advanced by Nick Bostrom ('Superintelligence,' 2014), Stuart Russell ('Human Compatible,' 2019), Eliezer Yudkowsky and the LessWrong rationalist community, and — in more measured form — by Geoffrey Hinton and Yoshua Bengio. The Future of Life Institute open letter (22 March 2023) calling for a six-month pause on large AI experiments attracted over 30,000 signatories. The Center for AI Safety statement (30 May 2023) was signed by Hinton, Bengio, Sam Altman, and Demis Hassabis. The AI Safety Summit at Bletchley Park (1-2 November 2023) convened 28 countries plus the EU. Counter-arguments from Andrew Ng, Yann LeCun, and Melanie Mitchell hold that existential framing overstates near-term risk and distracts from concrete algorithmic harms including bias and labour displacement.
May 13, 2026fact-checked - Health & MedicinePartially True
COVID lockdown effectiveness public-health debate (2020-present)
The Great Barrington Declaration (4 October 2020), signed by epidemiologists Jay Bhattacharya, Sunetra Gupta, and Martin Kulldorff, advocated 'focused protection' of the vulnerable over broad population lockdowns. The John Snow Memorandum (14 October 2020) offered a counter-statement signed by Devi Sridhar, Trish Greenhalgh, and others. Sweden's Anders Tegnell pursued a less restrictive approach. A Johns Hopkins meta-analysis (Herby, Jonung, and Hanke, January 2022) found lockdowns had minimal effect on COVID mortality in Europe and the US. The Royal Society published a competing evidence review in August 2023. Jay Bhattacharya was appointed HHS Director in 2025. This is a legitimate ongoing scientific and policy debate, distinct from conspiracy claims that lockdowns were designed for population control.
May 13, 2026fact-checked - Health & MedicinePartially True
CDC mask-recommendation reversal (Feb-Apr 2020)
On 8 March 2020, Anthony Fauci told CBS 60 Minutes "people should not be walking around with masks." On 3 April 2020, the CDC reversed course and recommended universal cloth-mask use. Fauci later acknowledged in a December 2020 letter to Sinclair — and in a January 2021 BBC interview — that the initial messaging was shaped by concern that N95 supplies would be depleted for healthcare workers. The WHO made a similar reversal in June 2020. The episode is a documented public-health-communication failure debated in peer-reviewed literature (Brennan and Saad-Roy, Health Affairs, 2021). The conspiracy framing — that masks were always known to be useless and officials lied to control the public — conflates a real supply-driven communication decision with fabricated intent to deceive.
May 13, 2026fact-checked - Health & MedicinePartially True
Hydroxychloroquine COVID promotion and suppression (Mar-Jun 2020)
On 19 March 2020 President Trump called hydroxychloroquine a 'game-changer' for COVID-19 at a White House press briefing. The FDA granted an Emergency Use Authorization on 28 March 2020. Off-label prescribing spiked and Mehmet Oz promoted the drug on television. Two high-profile observational studies — in The Lancet (22 May 2020) and NEJM (1 May 2020) — appeared to show harm from HCQ; both were retracted on 4-5 June 2020 after the Surgisphere database underlying them was found to be fictitious (Sapan Desai, CEO). The FDA revoked the EUA on 15 June 2020. Large randomised trials — RECOVERY and WHO Solidarity — subsequently confirmed no meaningful benefit. The conspiracy framing is that HCQ was suppressed for political or commercial reasons; the reality is more complex: early fraudulent data damaged the evidentiary base, then rigorous trials ruled out benefit.
May 13, 2026fact-checked - Government & PoliticsConfirmed
Bush Sr Iran-Contra pardons (Dec 24 1992)
On Christmas Eve 1992, outgoing President George H.W. Bush pardoned six Iran-Contra figures: former Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, former Assistant Secretary of State Elliott Abrams, CIA officer Duane Clarridge, CIA officer Alan Fiers, former CIA Deputy Director of Operations Clair George, and former National Security Advisor Robert McFarlane. Independent Counsel Lawrence Walsh denounced the pardons as a "cover-up," arguing they cut off his investigation before Weinberger could stand trial. A Bush VP diary entry released after the pardons revealed that Bush himself had been fully briefed on the Iran-Contra operation: "I was one of the few people that knew fully the details." Walsh's Final Report (1993/1994) accused Bush of withholding information.
May 13, 2026fact-checked - Government & PoliticsPartially True
Chicago Boys + Pinochet economic reforms (1973-1990)
Beginning in the mid-1950s, an exchange programme between the University of Chicago economics department and the Catholic University of Chile sent Chilean students to study under Milton Friedman and Arnold Harberger. The resulting cohort — nicknamed the "Chicago Boys" and including Sergio de Castro, Pablo Baraona, Álvaro Bardón, and Jorge Cauas — implemented sweeping free-market reforms after the September 11 1973 coup that brought Augusto Pinochet to power. The reforms included mass privatisation of banking (1976-78) and pensions (1981 AFP system), steep tariff reductions, and central-bank independence. Their record is disputed: initial successes were followed by the severe 1981-83 recession and 1982 banking crisis. Naomi Klein's 'The Shock Doctrine' (2007) argued the reforms required authoritarian repression to implement; critics of Klein argue she overstated the causal link.
May 13, 2026fact-checked