Metabunk.org

Metabunk is a website (specifically, a discussion forum) dedicated to debunking and refuting various conspiracy theories and pseudosciences. Their stated mission statement is:

It was started in 2013 by, science writer, skeptical investigator, and retired video game programmer. Besides running Metabunk, Mick West also runs a podcast “Tales from the rabbit hole”, and his former projects have included another website “Contrail Science” specifically for debunking chemtrail conspiracy theories and a blog called “Cowboy Programming” where he demonstrated his explorations in video game programming.

A Brief History...
Mick West had been debunking various paranormal woo and Biblical scientific foreknowledge since 2003. In 2007, he came to know of a whole new pseudoscientific conspiracy theory gaining traction online known as chemtrails. For debunking this, Mick started a new blog called ContrailScience.com. Mick West’s big break came with the Mystery Missile, a plane flying from Hawaii to the mainland left a contrail on the horizon that looked a bit like a missile trail. He wrote a few articles debunking this theory and ended up being contacted by the media, who wanted to interview him. At the time he was still anonymous, but then decided that his debunking would be taken more seriously, and be more effective. So he went on TV, leading to a lot of traffic to his website. Troubled by the cumbersome off-topic discussion of other conspiracy theories unrelated to chemtrails and the limitations of the blog format, Mick West created another website called Metabunk to foster more such discussions more freely. From Mick West’s own words... The name Metabunk is meant to convey the idea of thinking about debunking, and not simply doing it. Thinking about how to debunk better, and thinking about why we debunk, and what it is we are really trying to do.

Topics
The topics discussed at Metabunk are categorized into several forums, which consist of:

General Discussion

 * General Discussion — Self explanatory.
 * Conspiracy Theories — Discussion of general conspiracy theories that don't fit in the more specialised forums below.
 * People Debunked — Bunk comes from people, and is repeated and promoted by people. Sometimes it's the people themselves that need debunking.
 * Coronavirus COVID-19 — Discussion of COVID-19 conspiracy theories, but worse than those covered in our WIGO Coronavirus.
 * Health and Quackery — Homeopathy, Naturopathy, Touch therapy, alternative medicine and other quackery.
 * Science and Pseudoscience — Perpetual motion, Anti-Gravity, Flat Earth, Hexagonal Water, all sorts of stuff.
 * Escaping The Rabbit Hole — where he uses the stories of former conspiracy/woo believers to help other people come out of their rabbit hole.
 * Tales From the Rabbit Hole Podcast — where Mick West runs a weekly podcast with former/active conspiracy theorists and their skewed view of the world.

Conspiracy theories

 * 5G and Other EMF Health Concerns — Woo surrounding EMF and 5G.
 * 9/11 — Conspiracy theories surrounding 9/11.
 * UFO Videos and Reports from the US Navy — Analysis of the three US Navy videos obtained by TTSA.
 * UFOs, Aliens, Monsters, and the Paranormal — Fortean phenomena, Alien UFOs, Pyramid power, Crop circles, Ghosts, Cryptozoology. Things that are a little bit more towards the fringe.
 * Contrails and Chemtrails — White lines in the sky that look like contrails, but conspiracy theorists claim are some kind of mind control illicit spraying. Mick West’s favourite pseudoscientific conspiracy theory.
 * Skydentify — Discussion with a community of meteorologists, pilots, scientists and other sky-watchers who will have a bash at identifying anything you may have seen in the sky (a plane, cloud, trail, strange object or other UFO you've seen in the sky).
 * Flat Earth — Investigations of claims that support a flat earth.
 *  Quotes debunked — Quotes can be taken out of context, or otherwise misinterpreted. This forum aims to clarify so.

Some of the less popular ones
.
 * Wildfires — Forest fires...?
 * Flight MH370 — Theories, facts, and speculations surrounding the disappearance of flight MH370.
 * Flight MH17 — Discussion about what may and may not had happened to flight MH17.
 * Boston Marathon Bombings — Conspiracies surrounding the Boston Marathon Bombings.
 * Sandy Hook — Sandy Hook shooting conspiracies.
 * HAARP — Debunking theories about HAARP, other similar facilites, and related topics such as any form of electromagnetic weather control, etc.
 * Oroville Dam — Discussion of topics relating to the 2017 Oroville Dam Spillway incident.
 * Election 2020 — Investigating and Debunking disinformation regarding the 2020 U.S. presidential election.

Methodology
Mick West has made an extensive but brief post on how to get started on practical debunking, stating the rules that should not be broken during it. Here, they have been broken down and compacted for easier reading.

Audiences
Audiences to keep in mind while writing a skeptical article:
 * Community of like-minded skeptics
 * Familiar with the subject matter, but haven’t formed any opinions
 * Never heard of the subject matter

Bunk infection levels
Those who have already fallen into the rabbit hole:
 * Reasonable believers — people who believe a theory based on false or cherry-picked facts. May be open to discussion and new facts, and hence, rescuable.
 * True believers — people who have lost immunity to a particular subject. Anything not supporting their belief is instantly and instinctively assumed incorrect as it contradicts with their position. Frequently they will not see reason, but they can be useful as a source of memetic material to help inoculate others. They will frequently run through the entire set of “evidence” one piece at a time, oblivious to the fact that everything they bring up is easily explained. This may be useful for getting familiar with the common arguments presented.
 * Extremists — people who have gone beyond the realm of rational thinking and reasoning. Often their arguments are not even wrong, and so absurdly extreme, that they are impossible to reason with, even on topics that are completely unrelated to the conspiracy they believe.

Guidelines

 * 1) Tell the truth.
 * 2) Don't lie or it will come back to hurt you. This is actually just a repetition of the first rule, but it is mentioned here anyway.
 * 3) Don't hide facts. If something conflicts with your theory, then change or expand the theory. If you hide a fact, it’s going to come up to bite your ass later.
 * 4) Be polite. Insulting people just polarizes them. Telling someone they are “stupid”, “retarded”, or even that they need to “do more research”, isn’t really going to help. Of course there will be people who reject your ideas, no matter how you present them, polite or not. But remember you have a greater audience than the person you are ostensibly discussing with. Part of that greater audience might just be convinced, even if the individual you are arguing with is not.
 * 5) Have a thick skin. Most people will most certainly call you stupid, evil, ignorant, or a shill, or to “do your own research” Do not let this get to you, however, and do not let it tempt you to respond in kind. Being perceived as angry will only provide a distraction from what you are saying.
 * 6) Don't be passive-aggressive, don't be too sarcastic either. It's all stuff that can be perceived as insults, and all stuff that can distract. Instead, try to be simple, honest, direct, and polite, and just take a deep breath.
 * 7) Don’t try to win. Don’t compromise truth for the sake of "winning". There is no contest, nor there is any prize. You don’t win if you convince someone of your point of view, but lie to them or withhold evidence along the way. You want a mutual agreement, something where both of you have arrived at a commonly held understanding of the facts that is closer to the truth. This might even mean you yourself may change your opinions a little. But that’s why they call them “opinions”.
 * 8) Don’t be an expert. It does not matter what your credentials are. Being an expert gives you easier access to information, and it provides mental tools to help process that information. But you can’t just then say “because I said so”. You still have to explain, to demonstrate, and to provide the means of verifying your point of view.
 * 9) Keep on target. One thing at a time. It’s very important to not lose focus, as there are lots of topic out there that will suck the life out of any discussion. One can be having a perfectly reasonable discussion about why contrail cirrus can last for several hours, and then someone says “yeah, I suppose you believe that WTC7 fell down because of a little fire”, and all of a sudden it’s tangent city. Of course you could fully debunk any WTC7 myth they throw at you but don’t go there. It’s just a huge time sink. Don’t allow off-topic discussion if possible, and just ignore it if you can’t.
 * 10) Know your limits. Don’t dive into a highly hostile forum that has woo bunk-filled views of the world. If they all agree, then you are going to get nowhere. There’s a range of conspiracy forums. They all contain the full spectrum of conspiracy theorists, but some forums tend more towards the extremes than others. Read before writing there. Above Top Secret is more sensible than Prison Planet. Prison Planet is more sensible than David Icke. And even David Icke can be more sensible than some of the more specialised forums out there.
 * 11) Debunker or skeptic? Both, of course. But beware of language. For many “skeptics” are evil paid con shills, for other it’s “debunkers”. They have somehow got the wrong definition of the word. I hesitated somewhat in using “bunk” at all in this blog. But then it’s for people who understand what true scientific skepticism is, and what true debunking is. But you might want to be careful in an initial encounter not to alienate people by saying you are a “debunker”, if you know they are going to take that the wrong way.
 * 12) Back up your assertions. Provide the source of your data. Don’t just say “Aluminum makes up 8% of the Earth’s Crust”, unless you can back it up. Studies show that doing so can make you win arguments easier.
 * 13) Keep it simple. It’s not simple. It’s complicated. It’s very easy to make the explanation complicated, and then you either lose them by using science beyond their ken, or you get bogged down in minutiae. Keep it simple. “It can’t be true because … [of this one thing]”. Use the simplest thing that you think they will understand. Quick example there - The Bard of Ely believed in chemtrails, and fought against all arguments. The breakthrough came when he realized that the solar halos could only be made by ice crystals, not powder. Unfortunately there’s no way of knowing that that was the one thing that would tip the balance.
 * 14) Let them debunk it for you. Teach a man to fish and you won’t need to keep giving him fish. While it’s very temping to simply lay out the facts and prove that something is bunk, it’s much more productive for everyone to allow them to fill in a few steps for themselves. You need to gauge this carefully. Many people “want to believe”, so will resist doing anything that might harm their beliefs. But if you can get someone to look something up, perform a simple experiment, or fill in a logical step in an argument, then you win them over in a far more solid manner than if you did all the work for them. You can extend this by actually teaching them how to debunk - or at least giving them little skills, like how to effectively use Google, or perhaps some little bit of math, or a reference they can use.
 * 15) Know the language. Believers often have a very specific usage or misunderstanding of specific terms. They frequently take any mention of some term (e.g. “aerosol”) to be related to their specific theory. Understand this when discussing the subject with them, and attempt to either explain what the term means, or use more neutral terms (dust, water vapor). Sometimes they will pick on an unusual phrase and simply misinterpret it, like “radiative forcing”. Here you’ve got to explain the term to them. You’ll have to do it again and again. You might want to consider putting up a little glossary of frequently misunderstood terms for your domain.
 * 16) Don’t believe someone else’s eyes. Quite often you get statements like “I know what I saw”. When what they saw was something fairly boring, but it looks like something, and then they fit that into their world view.
 * 17) Keep it understandable. The most irrefutable debunk in the world is useless if nobody reads it. It needs to be written in an accessible manner. Give the simplest and easiest to check facts first. Make it entertaining. Politeness is a factor here again, as you can turn people off. Be polite, and more people will read it.
 * 18) Use simple language. Use short sentences. Encapsulate single concepts in single paragraphs. Don’t include confusing things unless needed. Leave those to a sidebar/appendix/footnote. Keep it along the lines of “Because A, then B”.
 * 19) Learn from history. Where did this conspiracy come from? What is the context? The fluoride conspiracy makes more sense in the context of the communist fear period of McCarthy in the 1950s. So what are the Zeitgeistical roots of this conspiracy? Chemtrails come from health scares on talk radio. UFO’s come from the Roswell incident and the Red Menace. The Federal Reserve conspiracies perhaps from anti-semitism.
 * 20) Avoid repeating yourself. Think twice, write once. Make your explanations well worded, and in a form that can be re-used. It’s better to put some effort into writing a blog post, because then whenever someone raises the same point again, you can just point them at the post (I really should write a post explaining Radiative Forcing). If new information comes along, you can just update it.
 * 21) Avoid repeating others. Unless you are debunking a niche theory, then it’s likely that other people will have addressed any given point before, and often very well. If there’s a better explanation, then just link to it. If there are multiple explanations, then link to them. If you find you have to write additional material, then you might need to synthesize the various other articles into something new. But make sure that you are adding something. Make a copy of whatever you link to, in case it vanishes.
 * 22) Don’t debunk where there is no evidence. A very common problem in bunk circles is when they raise the issue “you can’t prove that it isn’t”. Do not rise to this bait. The key point is that they have no evidence that it is. There are an infinite number of things that you can’t prove are not so (see Russell's Teapot), so for them to require you to debunk something, they first have to provide evidence that it is so. Then your first step it to nullify that evidence by explaining it with conventional theories (long lasting trails in the sky = contrails). One their evidence is nullified, you don’t need to provided extra evidence against their theory, as they now still have no evidence for it.

Tools
Mick West has developed several tools to help investigating and debunking several different conspiracy theories. Many of these can also be embedded into the forum posts of Metabunk by any user to debunk any claim.

Tools from people other than Mick West
These tools were not made by Mick West, but are included in the list of tools for practical debunking by Mick West anyway.

Reception
Metabunk has been cited by, and. MBFC has rated Metabunk as a pro-science resource with high factual reporting.

Criticism
As with all fact checking and debunking resources, Metabunk.org has also been targeted by conspiracy cranks and Mick West being the subject to character assassination several times, accusing Mick West of being paid by the government to spread disinformation.

Unsurprisingly, "It's a shill!" is a common argument. Many conspiracy theorists have tried to make stuff up to serve as evidence against its credibility. They argue that the website is so professionally written that it must be impossible for it to be run majorly by only one person, both physically and financially. This was briefly debunked by Mick at the website:

This was further supported by screenshots and links for the prices.