April 13, 2018

Nibiru watch

The Herald website has just published another story about the imaginary and invisible planet Nibiru. That’s in addition to the nine from last year.

  • 18 Nov: Conspiracy theorists claim mysterious planet Nibiru will trigger apocalyptic earthquakes
  • 25 Sep: Nibiru: How the nonsense Planet X Armageddon and Nasa fake news theories spread globally
  • 30 Oct: The end of the world as we know it (again)
  • 23 Sep: How the nonsense Planet X Armageddon, Nasa fake news spread globally
  • 19 Sep: The world is about to end, if you believe this doomsday claim
  • 30 Aug: Claims new planet ‘about to destroy Earth’ and clues written on pyramids
  • 23 Sep: ‘Extremely violent times will come’: TV broadcast interrupted with end-of-world prediction
  • 9 Aug: Rogue planet about to smash into Earth, claim conspiracy theorists
  • 4 Jan: Conspiracy theorist claims mysterious planet Nibiru will smash into Earth and the world will end in October 2017

As you see, two of the stories ask how this nonsense theory spread globally.

One says, with a splendid lack of self-awareness

Despite absolutely no scientific evidence to back up the suggestions of a rogue planet getting rapidly closer to Earth, myths about Planet X continue to be perpetuated online, according to the Telegraph UK.

Indeed they do.

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Thomas Lumley (@tslumley) is Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Auckland. His research interests include semiparametric models, survey sampling, statistical computing, foundations of statistics, and whatever methodological problems his medical collaborators come up with. He also blogs at Biased and Inefficient See all posts by Thomas Lumley »