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Hayden Thompson Professor McKinney English 1020 19 March 2023 Proposal with Annotated Bibliography Proposal: Conspiracy Theories Ever since I was only a young child, roughly the age of 8 or 9 years old, I have been fascinated by conspiracy theories. The root of my interest in these theories comes from when I noticed an extremely popular TV show that my dad watched frequently, called The Big Bang Theory. I eventually had asked him what the meaning of “The Big Bang Theory” was, and he explained to me what a conspiracy theory was, as well as what that specific theory was about. He explained to me that the theory of the “Big Bang” was a physical theory that what we know as “the universe” originally expanded from an initial state of infinite density and temperature. Now, as many people may agree, almost every child is amazed by the stars in the sky that you can see during the nighttime. So, being someone who was interested in space as a kid, I was immediately intrigued by how our universe might have come to be. After reading all about this theory of The Big Bang, that led me to other conspiracy theories that are popular around the world. I have been researching them for many years, and what interests me so much is the fact that you can’t help but wonder about the possibilities. The thing about these conspiracy theories is that, sadly, they are considered “conspiracy theories” because there is no viable evidence to prove them to be true, and in most cases, there probably never will be. The audience for this topic would be people who are also fascinated by conspiracy theories, like me. I think that one cause for people falling for conspiracy theories is because of how easy it is to believe them, even without proof. People are very quick to jump to conclusions, and I am also guilty of this myself. Someone may see one thing that supports a conspiracy theory and immediately fly to the conclusion that it must be true. In a lot of cases, I believe that conspiracy theories are completely harmless, but it depends on the situation in order to determine if it has a negative effect on people and society in general. For example, during the global pandemic beginning in 2020, known as the “Corona Virus” or “COVID-19”, people were quarantined nationwide and required to wear masks out in public. Almost instantly, there were many theories flying around about the pandemic. “Was COVID-19 created in a lab in China?” Personally, I heard this specific theory on several different occasions. Eventually, when a vaccine was passed, theories began to rise about how the vaccines were bad for you, making everyone sick, and killing people (they were not). Therefore, in this particular situation, I do believe that conspiracy theories were harmful to society, because these speculations kept a lot of people from being vaccinated. However, there are many conspiracy theories that are completely harmless and normal to observe and speculate about. These include, The Big Bang mentioned above, whether the moon landing was real or not, and many more that you might know about. These theories are

just simply interesting to imagine about and think about how crazy it would be if they were true (they are not). Something that people can do to prevent falling for conspiracy theories is look more into the facts and things that can be proven, rather than falling for one piece of evidence in support of the theory when there are already several scientific facts that debunk the theory. As far as the theory of the moon landing being fake, if you investigate the scientific facts regarding the whole situation, the theory has been debunked. One of the denier's main pieces of “proof” is that the flag looks as if it is flapping in the wind, which technically wouldn’t make sense because the moon has no atmosphere. The fact is that if you look closely, there is a horizontal part of the flagpole at the top that is holding the flag up, which makes it look like it's flapping in the wind. This does not even require scientific research, but only requires paying attention to details. Another thing that a denier uses as “evidence” is that the landing was fake because you cannot see the stars in the background. The truth is that the astronaut’s camera was too short to capture the astronauts and their spacesuits, while also capturing the stars in the background. You can test this yourself by going out to your back porch at night and turning on the lights. Although you can see the stars from where you are standing, your camera will not pick up on the stars. “The moon landing was fake because you can’t see Armstrong’s camera” is yet another claim by people who do not believe in the moon landing. The reality is that he could not have just walked around on the moon with a regular hand-held camera. Therefore, Armstrong’s camera was mounted on the front of his suit, which is where his hair appears to be in the picture he took of Aldrin. Rick Fienberg states that belief in these myths is more of an ideological and political thing rather than scientific. I used to be one of the people that would fall for conspiracy theories without actually looking at all of the evidence that has been conducted debunking the theory itself. The Big Bang is probably my biggest interest as far as conspiracy theories go as of right now. The craziest thing to me is that it has not been debunked yet. Scientists have tried to debunk the theory and the James Webb Space Telescope was thought to have been something that finally debunked the theory, but it did not. Scientists claim that the telescope did not prove anything to be wrong as far as the Big Bang goes and that cosmologists were not panicking like a lot of social media are claiming. I think my fascination and knowledge of conspiracy theories makes this a great topic for me to pursue. I will need to conduct more research, but it will also help because I have been reading about these theories for most of my life. I could sit down and talk for hours about the moon landing, the Big Bang, the pyramids, UFOs, aliens, etc. Bob Lazar is someone that I have actually learned a lot from, by watching his documentary on Netflix about his time spent in Area 51. He spent his time reverse engineering a UFO spaceship, and he says that he discovered something that no one there had ever seen before, now known as Element 115. It allows flying saucers to fly in the way that they do, rather than the way we fly airplanes and helicopters. Lazar worked in a secret site called “S4” in Area 51, and he claims that there were 9 spacecrafts in the site that were not of this world. The documentary was very fascinating to me, but the only thing you can wonder about is if he is just a big hoaxer trying to gain fame or is he trying to get the information out to the public for the sake of scientists and humanity in general to make

everybody aware of the fact that we may not be alone in this universe. Personally, I think that there is not a chance that we are the only life in this universe, or even in this galaxy. That’s why this documentary in particular caught my interest so easily, and it is something that I have watched multiple times because of how intriguing it is to me.

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Annotated Bibliography This is the first source that I researched and used for my topic proposal on conspiracy theories, “What Is the Big Bang Theory?” authored by Matt Williams. I already had a general idea of what the theory of The Big Bang was, which is the idea that our universe as we know it originally came to be from a massive explosion in an infinitely dense and infinitely hot point in space. This caused all matter at the time to compact into a small ball that scientists call Singularity. Singularity began rapidly expanding into what we now know as our universe. This is all estimated to have begun 13.8 billion years ago, which is why the estimated age of our universe is 13.8 billion years old. As you may know, our universe is still constantly expanding and cooling. This has led to theories about a possible ending point. Will it one day run out of expansive force and stop? Or will it continue to expand since it began with infinite density and heat? The expansive of the universe is broken down into what scientists label as eras. Beginning with Singularity or also known as the Planck Epoch, or Planck Era, is the earliest known period of the universe. This Planck period of time extends from point 0 to approximately 10-43 seconds and is so named because it can only be measured in Planck time. At this time, all matter was condensed on a single point of infinite density and extreme heat (Williams). Also, during this period, due the universe being at extreme heats and density of matter, it was incredibly unstable. The next period is labeled as the Inflation Epoch, or Inflation Era. The period lasted from 10-32 seconds during the Planck Era to an unknown time. Most cosmological models suggest that the Universe at this point was filled homogeneously with a high-energy density, and that the incredibly high temperatures and pressure gave rise to rapid expansion and cooling (Williams). The universe began to expand exponentially during this era due to a phase transition that caused a separation of forces. During the Inflation Epoch, there was a time where hypothetically, temperatures were so high that it caused random motions of particles at relativistic speeds. This caused the creation and destruction of particle-antiparticle pairs, which is believed to be the reason why matter became dominate over antimatter. After the Inflation Epoch came the Cooling Epoch, or Cooling Era. As the universe continued to decrease in density and temperature, the energy of each particle began to decrease and phase transitions continued until the fundamental forces of physics and elementary particles changed into their present form (Williams). This next part is what makes the theory so interesting to me, because it can be proved by modern day experiments. Particle energies would have dropped to values that can be obtained by modern day particle physics experiments. From this period onward, the theory becomes less and less subject to speculation. It is hard to keep people from falling for this specific theory, because it is something that has not been proved to be false by science, and frankly, there are many more things that scientists have researched that point to the theory being true, rather than false. If I continued to speculate on The Big Bang, this paper would end up being well over the page limit. I think that this source is a reliable source and very credible. The author, Matt Williams, is a space journalist and science communicator for Interesting Engineering and Universe Today. He also has a podcast on stories from space. He has a wide range of information and scientific evidence on The Big Bang. The only thing that I would change is that I wish he was more specific as far as what scientists he got some of the evidence from.

Williams, Matt. “What Is the Big Bang Theory?” Phys.org , Universe Today, 18 Dec. 2015, https://phys.org/news/2015-12-big-theory.html . The next source I used is titled “Why People Fall For Conspiracy Theories” by Kaleigh Rogers and Jasmine Mithani. I researched this source to give myself a better understanding about why it is so easy for everyone to fall for conspiracy theories. After reading through this source, I learned that having certain traits is what leads people towards believing some of these theories. In this source, the authors mention theories such as the moon landing being a hoax, vaccines being safe or not, and the 2020 election being “stolen”. The source uses a game of bird watching to demonstrate a trait called “jumping to conclusions”. This bias gives people the tendency to make their minds up quickly, often with very little evidence (Rogers, Mithani). For instance, many people fall for the moon landing theory of it being a hoax. People look at details such as the flag waving even though there is no atmosphere or wind, but they do not pay attention to the fact that there is a horizontal pole holding the flag up to give it that look. There is a lot of scientific evidence to debunk theories like this, and all you have to do is look more into it rather than jumping to conclusions immediately after you glance at the flag, for instance. This was a great source for me, personally, and it was fun to interact with all of the little games that show you how people may or may not fall for conspiracy theories. In my opinion, the games really helped this source get its point across about things like the jumping to conclusion bias that many people have. I knew even before I played the bird watching game on the site that I have jumping to conclusion bias, because it is just easier to jump to a conclusion when you see the first piece of evidence supporting a theory to be true. In a way, it is the lazier option rather than doing deep research to see if a theory has been debunked or not. The source is reliable in my opinion because you can experience the things it talks about for yourself through the interactive game on the site. Kaleigh Rogers does technology and is a politics reporter for FiveThirtyEight and Jasmine Mithani is a journalist who also reports for FiveThirtyEight. Mithani, Jasmine, and Kaleigh Rogers. “Why People Fall for Conspiracy Theories.” Why People Fall For Conspiracy Theories , FiveThirtyEight, 15 June 2021, https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-people-fall-for-conspiracy-theories/ . The next source that I used to research conspiracy theories is titled “Are Conspiracy Theories Harmless?” authored by Karen M. Douglas. This source aided me in gaining a better understanding of ways that conspiracy theories harm or do not harm our society and socialization. This article also mentions how conspiracy theories appeal more to people who show a tendency to look for patterns and meaning in chaos (van Prooijen et al., 2018). The COVID-19 pandemic theories such as the vaccines being dangerous, and the vaccines being an excuse to control the public were major focuses of this article. Theories like this involving the pandemic, as you may know, led to a lot of people refuses to get vaccinated no matter what the circumstances were. So far, the positive outcomes of conspiracy theorizing seem to be heavily outweighed by the negative psychological and societal consequences which have been studied more comprehensively in psychology and other social sciences (Douglas). Another health-related conspiracy theory that has a negative effect on society is the theory on birth control being a form of genocide towards Africans and African Americans. This obviously has a negative effect on

attitudes towards things like contraception in the United States. To end her article, Douglas suggests that a significant challenge for researchers would be to learn how to deal with conspiracy theories and their associated effects. I think that this source was scholarly and filled with a vast amount of information on different types of conspiracy theories and how they may negatively or positively affect attitudes and behavior in our society in the United States. This source is credible due to the author, Karen M. Douglas, being a professor at the University of Kentucky for social psychology, meaning that she teaches about that have effects on socialization, behavior, and attitudes in our society. She also includes a work cited portion of the article at the end, showing that all the sources that she used are reliable. Douglas, Karen M. “Are Conspiracy Theories Harmless?: The Spanish Journal of Psychology.” Cambridge Core , Cambridge University Press, 22 Feb. 2021, https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/spanish-journal-of-psychology/article/are- conspiracy-theories-harmless/FA0A9D612CC82B02F91AAC2439B4A2FB . The next source that I chose to research is titled “Conspiracy Theories: What Can I Do to Stop Them?” authored by Calvin J. Emerson. This article discusses solutions to keep yourself from falling for conspiracy theories. Emerson mentions that when people are faced with irrational logic, they often have a moment when they want to yell out “Why on Earth do you believe this?!” Feelings like this can be a result of having a strong belief in or against a conspiracy theory, and when you start a conversation with someone who believes the opposite that you do, you may be faced with emotions like this. He insists that the best thing that you can do in this situation is fight the urge to let your emotions out, because it will likely damage your relationship with the theorist and create more distance and conflict. Emerson discussed one solution named “The Truth-Sandwich Method”. This method was developed by UC Berkeley professor George Lakoff. Basically, it is proving your point with a factual statement that you repeat twice. For example, say someone you know believes that they don’t need the COVID-19 vaccine because the virus has a 99.9% survival rate (which it doesn’t). In that case, you should say: “The survival rate is high, but the virus is still incredibly dangerous. Even 1%, in a country of 328 million people like ours, would cost over 3 million people (about the population of Arkansas) their lives. That’s why, even though the survival rate is high, the virus is still incredibly dangerous” (Emerson). I think that this source is good due to the information given and the solutions provided to keep people from falling for conspiracy theories. However, there is no information given on the author's background, which leaves me questioning the credibility of this article, especially since I was unable to find anything online about him too. I somewhat agree with the Truth-Sandwich Method, except I think that if someone is set on an opinion, giving them facts will not change their opinion, because people in the world tend to be stubborn. Emerson, Calvin J. “Conspiracy Theories: What Can I Do to Stop Them?: Youth Engaged 4 Change.” Conspiracy Theories: What Can I Do to Stop Them? | Youth Engaged 4 Change , Youth Engaged 4 Change, 17 Aug. 2017, https://engage.youth.gov/blog/conspiracy- theories-what-can-i-do-stop-them . The last source that I chose to research for the topic of conspiracy theories is Bob Lazar and his alleged reverse engineering of a spacecraft that is “not of this world”. The title of the

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source I chose to further research this is titled “UFOs, the Pentagon, and the enigma of Bob Lazar” authored by Glen Meek. I already knew a good amount about this whole situation with Bob Lazar because I watched the documentary multiple times when it first was released on Netflix. To sum up the source, it had the same information as the documentary. Bob Lazar worked on a site called “S-4” in Lincoln County near Area-51. On this site, he allegedly reverse- engineered an extraterrestrial spacecraft in which he claims to have discovered something that had never been seen before. He claims that there were nine alien spacecrafts in “S-4” that have been being researched for some 30 years or so. This site is reliable to me because it aligns with the documentary, except for the fact that it fails to mention “Element 115” that Lazar mentions in the documentary. This is just a conspiracy on whether Lazar’s claims are true or not and I have always found it very interesting. The author, Glen Meek, is an Emmy Award-winning former Las Vegas investigative reporter. This article covers a lot of information and fills the reader in with everything they need to know about Bob Lazar and his claims on his time spent working on extraterrestrial crafts. Meek, Glen. “UFOs, the Pentagon, and the Enigma of Bob Lazar.” Nevada Current , Nevada Current, 2 June 2021, https://www.nevadacurrent.com/2021/06/01/ufos-the-pentagon-and- the-enigma-of-bob-lazar/ .