16 “Conspiracy Theories That Came True”, Fact-Checked

In July 2013 a list called “16 conspiracy theories that turned out to be true” spread widely online. It was written by Michael T. Snyder, a former Washington lawyer who ran the blog The Truth Wins, and it was republished on many activist sites. Some of its entries describe real, documented events. Others describe things that were never secret, and a few are misleading or simply wrong.

Here is the quick verdict. Mass surveillance by the NSA and the IRS’s extra scrutiny of political groups were genuine revelations. The SV40 polio-vaccine contamination really happened, but it did not lead to a measurable rise in cancer. Professional wrestling being scripted, genetically modified lab animals and Texas drought problems were public knowledge, not hidden plots. Claims about fluoride, mobile phones, elite depopulation plans, satanic ritual murders and the Federal Reserve as a private cartel do not hold up as stated.

The list also opened with a claim that one study had found “conspiracy theorists” to be saner than everyone else. The study in question, by Michael Wood and Karen Douglas in Frontiers in Psychology (2013), did nothing of the sort. It analysed online comments about 9/11 and found that people who backed conspiracy explanations mostly attacked the official account rather than defending their own, and that the comments of those defending the official account were, on average, more hostile in tone. It did not measure anyone’s mental health.

Below, all sixteen items are grouped by what the evidence actually shows.

Confirmed: surveillance and political targeting

15. The NSA was collecting phone records and internet data

This one was true. In June 2013, documents leaked by the former contractor Edward Snowden showed that the NSA had obtained phone records of more than 120 million Verizon customers under a secret court order, and revealed the PRISM programme for collecting data from large tech firms, as summarised on Wikipedia. In July 2013 an NSA deputy director told Congress that analysts could look up to three “hops” from a suspect, which widens the net enormously. In 2015 Congress passed the USA Freedom Act, which ended the NSA’s own bulk storage of call records and required more specific search terms.

9. The IRS gave conservative groups extra scrutiny

Largely true, with an important later footnote. In May 2013 the Treasury’s inspector general reported that IRS staff had flagged tax-exemption applications using terms such as “Tea Party” and “Patriots”, leaving many on hold for long periods. The acting IRS commissioner resigned. A 2017 follow-up report found that “progressive” and other left-leaning keywords had also been used from 2004 to 2013, while confirming that conservative groups were treated unfairly; in 2017 the government settled lawsuits with an apology and payments to those groups, according to Wikipedia’s account.

6. Federal employees were asked to watch colleagues

Partly true. After the WikiLeaks disclosures, the Obama administration set up an “insider threat” programme that encouraged federal staff to report warning signs such as unexplained money problems among colleagues, as McClatchy reported in July 2013. It was a published policy aimed at leaks of classified material rather than a secret scheme, though civil-liberties groups criticised it as encouraging suspicion of ordinary behaviour.

Real events, but exaggerated: vaccines and labs

1. Cancer-causing viruses in vaccines

A real event, wrongly framed. Between 1955 and 1963, 10 to 30% of doses of the injected polio vaccine given to about 98 million Americans were contaminated with SV40, a monkey virus that can cause tumours in laboratory animals. Scientists discovered it in 1960 and US vaccines have been free of it since the early 1960s. According to the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia Vaccine Education Center, epidemiological studies found no increased cancer risk among people who received those vaccines. Calling SV40 a “cancer virus” in humans therefore overstates the evidence, and today’s vaccines are not affected.

4. Millions of genetically modified animals in research

True, but never hidden. UK Home Office statistics for 2012, reported by The Independent, showed about 4 million procedures on animals, and for the first time more of them involved genetically modified animals (mostly mice) than ordinary ones. These numbers are published every year precisely so that the public can scrutinise animal research.

5. Human-animal hybrids

Real research, sensationally described. Scientists do create chimeras, such as mice with human immune cells or goats engineered to produce milk proteins found in human milk, to study diseases and test treatments. This work appears in peer-reviewed journals and is regulated by ethics committees; the debate is about where the limits should be, not about whether it is happening in secret.

Never secret in the first place

2. Cash machines with facial recognition

In 2013 the American firm Diebold showed a concept ATM with a tablet-style screen, QR codes and facial recognition, as the Daily Mail reported. That was a product announcement, not an exposed plot. Biometric cash machines have since been trialled in various countries, and the real questions concern data protection and consent.

7. Professional wrestling is scripted

True, and openly admitted long before 2013. In 1989 WWF owner Vince McMahon told New Jersey legislators that wrestling was entertainment rather than a competitive sport, partly to avoid athletic-commission rules, as the Wikipedia entry on kayfabe explains. The 2013 story about an online fan correctly “predicting” results was a curiosity about leaks, not proof of a cover-up.

8. Texas running out of water

A serious problem, not a conspiracy. Texas suffered severe drought from 2011, and cities such as Midland raised water prices while businesses scrambled to cut use, as CNBC reported in 2013. State water planning, reservoirs and the depletion of aquifers are discussed openly by officials and scientists.

Health claims that do not hold up

10. Fluoride is bad for your teeth

Misleading. In 2011 US health agencies proposed lowering the recommended level of fluoride in drinking water, finalised in 2015 at 0.7 mg per litre, to reduce dental fluorosis, mostly faint white marks on children’s enamel. That adjustment did not reverse the main finding that fluoride helps prevent tooth decay; a 2015 Cochrane review cited on Wikipedia estimated fewer cavities in children, though it rated the evidence as low quality. Much higher natural levels are harmful, which is why limits exist.

11. Mobile phones cause cancer

Not supported. The 2010 Interphone study reported a higher glioma risk among the heaviest users, but its authors warned that biases and errors prevented a causal conclusion. A 2024 review commissioned by the World Health Organization and led by Australia’s radiation agency examined 63 studies from 1994 to 2022 and found no link between mobile phone use and brain or head cancers.

12. Prescription drugs kill many Americans

Partly true, but not a conspiracy. A 2011 Vanity Fair investigation cited an estimate of about 200,000 deaths a year; estimates of deaths from adverse drug reactions and medication errors vary widely depending on how they are counted. The concern is real and has grown with the later opioid crisis, but it is debated in medical journals and government reports, not hidden. Never stop a prescribed medicine on your own; talk to a doctor first.

Misattributed, distorted or false

13. The elite want to cut the world’s population

The quotes used for this item were selective and partly wrong. Paul Ehrlich, author of The Population Bomb (1968), is a Stanford biologist, not a former science adviser to George W. Bush. The passage attributed to John Holdren comes from Ecoscience, a 1977 textbook he co-wrote with Paul and Anne Ehrlich, which surveyed possible population policies; at his 2009 Senate confirmation hearing Holdren said he had never endorsed forced sterilisation, according to Wikipedia. The figures quoted for Ted Turner, David Rockefeller and Bill Maher are often attributed but rarely sourced to the original interview. Worry about overpopulation is a public opinion people argue about, not evidence of a plan.

14. Widespread satanic ritual murders

One terrible crime does not prove a network. The example given was a 2013 Los Angeles case in which a young man was jailed for life for killing his mother in what prosecutors described as a satanic ritual. Such cases are rare. In the 1980s and early 1990s, claims of organised satanic abuse caused a moral panic in the US, and a 1992 Justice Department guide for investigators found that the alleged large-scale ritual abuse could not be substantiated, urging police to focus on facts and alternative explanations.

16. The Federal Reserve is a private cartel built to create debt

Mostly false. The Fed, created in 1913, has a hybrid structure: its Board of Governors is a government agency appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate, while the twelve regional banks are owned by member banks that cannot sell or trade their stock and receive a capped dividend. After those dividends, its profits go to the US Treasury, close to 100 billion dollars in 2015, as Wikipedia notes. The dollar has indeed lost most of its purchasing power since 1913, and critics across the political spectrum debate Fed policy, but federal borrowing is set by Congress, not by the central bank.

3. Monsanto and the US government against GMO critics

Unconfirmed. This item relied on activist websites summarising a 2013 article in the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung about the influence of Monsanto supporters and former employees in US agencies. Revolving doors between industry and regulators are a fair subject for scrutiny, but the specific claim of a coordinated military-government campaign against activists and scientists was not backed by documents in the sources the list cited.

How to judge the next “conspiracy that came true”

• Was it ever secret? Published statistics, product launches and court records are not cover-ups.
• Who confirmed it? The NSA and IRS stories were confirmed by official documents, inspectors general and Congress, not just blogs.
• Does the conclusion follow? A contaminated vaccine batch in the 1950s does not mean modern vaccines cause cancer.
• Are the quotes real? Check whether a quote can be traced to a book, interview or transcript.

Healthy scepticism about governments and corporations is useful, and some of these stories show why. The best protection is to give each claim its own fair hearing, rather than treating a few real scandals as proof that everything else on a list must be true too.

About the original author: Michael T. Snyder is a former Washington D.C. attorney who published The Truth and wrote the novel “The Beginning Of The End”.

Sources: original list by Michael T. Snyder, The Truth Wins, via True Activist; Wood & Douglas (2013), Frontiers in Psychology; CHOP Vaccine Education Center: SV40; ARPANSA (2024); US Department of Justice (1992); Wikipedia: 2013 global surveillance disclosures; Wikipedia: USA Freedom Act; Wikipedia: IRS targeting controversy; Wikipedia: Kayfabe; Wikipedia: Water fluoridation; Wikipedia: John Holdren; Wikipedia: Federal Reserve.

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