In too deep?

Everyone loves a conspiracy theory to mock, but as he begins to find himself convinced, has Russ Swan got himself in too deep this time? You can't beat a good conspiracy theory and, in the absence of a good one, sometimes a bad one will do. I'm sure that many of us have our favourite crackpot theories, cherished for the nice warm feeling they give us while we chuckle inwardly at unfortunates that seem to believe them. And I'm sure that some of us, sometimes, hear one of these alternative explanations of reality and have reason to pause: "Well, actually…" But this is nothing more than the scientific method manifesting itself. We make progress by conjuring new ideas, selecting those that offer a better fit to observations and rejecting those that don't. It may take only the briefest consideration before the rational scientific thinker has to stifle an internal guffaw, but discovery does demand an open mind. A few minutes spent online (alright boss, it turned into more than a few) provides an astonishing array of scientific conspiracies. I'm not talking about those commonly trotted-out examples like the great global warming conspiracy or the faked moon landings, but some real humdingers of the art of unorthodox explanation of everyday phenomena. Have you ever wondered why it is that birds can fly but humans cannot? I know I have. The internet tells me, without even a hat-tip to Peter Pan, that this is because birds do not believe in gravity. Obvious, when you think about it. The real reason for the invasion of Iraq? To seize control of the Stargate that had been discovered in Baghdad, of course. Fluoride in water conspiracists have a long and illustrious history, but I have only recently learned details of their insight. The dosing of water supplies is an attempt to reduce the general level of intelligence of the population (by 20 IQ points, apparently), in order to make everyone more docile and easy to suppress. I can’t help thinking that it isn’t working, judging by a recent excursion into the war zone that is a city centre on a Saturday night. Low intelligence equals easy to suppress? Really? But there is one conspiracy theory that I just can’t shake. Seriously. There seems no sensible explanation other than an enormous official cover-up. When I tell you that my interest in it was sparked by the single best stocking filler of the recent gift-exchanging season, please don’t be alarmed. Many will agree that the most profound question facing us is whether life is common in the universe, or rare. We have hurled lumps of hardware of ever-increasing sophistication out into the void, in our attempts to determine the answer. Nowhere is this more significant than in the fleet of landers, crawlers, rollers and drillers that have been sent to Mars. Some of the most exciting science in the golden age of scientific discovery that we are fortunate enough to be experiencing has come from our planetary neighbour. Questions have been answered, and new questions raised. The current flagship of the fleet, Curiosity, has fulfilled its primary mission by providing precise details about the benign environment that once existed up there. What it hasn’t done, because it was never designed to, is attempt to detect life. Since the first Viking landers in the 1970s returned 'ambiguous' signatures, the scientific debate over the present existence of life on Mars has raged. We now know the place to be colder, drier, and nastier than ever thought, but we also know that life can cling on in more hostile environments than we ever thought possible. But no subsequent mission to Mars has actually looked for life, except the ill-fated British-led Beagle II. Pathfinder, Spirit, Opportunity, Phoenix, and Curiosity have all gone all the way there in order to answer other questions, but not The Big One. Conspiracy theorists had a field day in autumn 2013 with the announcement by Nasa of the mission parameters for its next mission to the Red Planet. The Mars 2020 rover will be based on Curiosity’s engineering, to save money, and will "search for signs of past life". It avowedly will not be looking for existing life. To the conspiracy theorist, there can only be one explanation: that they already know it’s there. The presence of methane in the thin Martian atmosphere means that either geological or biological processes are active. Nasa must be trying to keep the truth from the people of Earth, probably because we're too doped-up on fluoride to be able to comprehend the profundity of the revelation. So they keep us happy with Hot Wheels replicas of Curiosity (which, if you didn't get one, probably means you were on the naughty list), while building wormhole generators at Area 51 and telepathically communicating with lizard-like aliens to fine-tune their faster-than-light drives. Remember, you read it here first.