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Originally Posted by SecondSun
What I am asking is, why do you feel that you have a personal mission to explain to conspiracy theorists or so called alternative scientists why they are wrong. These people are generally not interested in convincing mainstream scientists that what they purport is true, nor are they attempting to convince the masses via public education that their alternative theory is correct (except in the case of "creation science" in certain parts of the US). Rather they appeal to a small minority of people who get a kick out of reading a good conspiracy story or like musing about ideas outside of the spectrum of established science. In otherwords, why do you care what a minority of people in the US and the world believe?
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Welcome to the board SecondSun. The problem here is that many of the things we debunk are not just appeals to people who a kick out of a conspiracy story. Promoters of doomsday predictions can cause real hardship on the people who believe them. Nancy L, who predicted that Planet X would cause massive destruction on May 15th 2003, scared many people -
here's one example. Some quit their jobs and left their families and friends in order to move to safe locations. Nancy also advocated
killing your pets to 'spare' them.
Other promoters of doomsday are con-artists out to get cash from people who don't know much about science. Still others truly believe in the things they promote, like astrologers, but since we find that it doesn't work then people who go to them are spending money needlessly which could have gone to other things.
Generally, that's why we do what we do, and why the Bad Astronomer made this site.