10 Conspiracy Theories People Actually Believe

Possibly the single most persistent conspiracy theory is that the CIA conducted, and continues to conduct, experiments in human mind control and uses these techniques to turn innocent American civilians into 'Manchurian candidates' and sleeper agents.

The CIA did indeed conduct mind control experiments from the 1950s to 1970s under the infamous MKULTRA program. Where the conspiracy theory deviates from reality is that MKULTRA didn't work. None of its experiments, which used uninformed and unconsenting subjects, actually led to anything useful to the CIA. Sidney Gottlieb, the scientist who was in charge of MKULTRA in the 1950s, publicly stated the whole thing was pointless.

But of course, the CIA would say that, wouldn't they? If they're lying and mind control really did work, the CIA didn't make particularly good use of it. It would presumably have come in handy in bumping off Fidel Castro, with whose assassination the CIA was obsessed with but never pulled off, along with ending the Cold War a few decades earlier than it actually did.

MKULTRA and its associated conspiracies highlight one of the big logical fallacies of conspiracy theories in general - if the conspiracies are so all-powerful and far-reaching, why haven't they achieve a hell of a lot more?