In a world where Johns Hopkins employs shamans with magic crystals, an obscure college questioning who wrote Othello is cause for comparatively tame concern. But there’s only so many times I can go after quack medicine, so we’ll focus on William Shakespeare’s works today.

While Concordia University in Portland hosts the Shakespeare Author Research Centre, the idea that someone other than Shakespeare penned Macbeth and Much Ado About Nothing remains a fringe idea. The arguments rest mostly on the appeals to personal incredulity and negative evidence, as well as some creative non sequiturs.

Proponents argue Shakespeare lacked the background and education to be familiar with multiple languages, legal vernacular, medical terms, maritime parlance, and even lawn bowling. This shows a lack of appreciation for the creative mind. H.G. Wells didn’t have to travel to the future or make himself invisible to write his books.

The idea of an alternative author first arose in the 19^th Century as an elitist objection over the idea of a man from a working class family in a piffling rural town becoming the most revered figure in English literature. In this appeal to personal incredulity, doubters say Shakespeare lacked the aristocratic sensibility or familiarity with the royal court to pen King Lear or Richard II. But biographical information is a poor route to establish authorship. Steven King was never chased by a possessed automobile or captured by a crazed fan. Besides, revealing one’s self autobiographically only became common in the 19^th Century literature.

While elitism started the movement, it gained traction in the 20^th Century for the opposite reason. Shakespeare was so much part of the establishment that attributing his work to someone else was the rebellion. Whatever the incentive, the idea has been largely rejected by literary experts and academia. This is sometimes offered as further evidence of the cover-up. Concordia’s authorship centre, for instance, maintains a tab labeled, “Exposing an industry in denial.”

One name commonly suggested by believers is Edward de Vere, the 17^th Earl of Oxford. He was a talented writer who had the aristocratic resume proponents feel was necessary to write the plays. The most sizable obstacle is that he died in 1604, whereas Shakespearean plays continued to be churned out until 1612. This leaves Oxfordians feebly arguing that the plays had been written before he died, but Shakespeare’s latter plays referenced events that occurred after 1604.

Then we have the Shake ‘n Bake theory, the notion that Shakespeare’s works were written by Francis Bacon. The latter was an extremely accomplished man, at once a scientist, philosopher, diplomat, and writer. It’s a shame many know him primarily as one of the contrarian author candidates. The Baconian wing may have produced the field’s most amusing moment when Orville Owen devised a cipher wheel that tried to detect clues he suspected Bacon had left in the plays.

Christopher Marlowe is another of the regular nominees, quite bizarre since he was murdered in 1593. This theory posits that Marlowe faked his death by convincing his attackers to cover for him while he high-tailed it to Italy and stealthily cranked out literature’s most magnificent canon. That’s a better plot than anything Shakespeare came up with. I tell you, Occam’s Razor is just so boring.

Another idea is that the plays were written by a woman who had to keep it secret owing to sexism. Joanne Rowling was forced to adopt the moniker JK in order to sound masculine, and females fared 100 times worse in Shakespeare’s time. It was so bad that female characters were played onstage by males. This created an especially absurd spectacle when the storyline included those characters disguising themselves as the other sex. Hence, there was a man pretending to be a woman pretending to be a man. However, establishing that early 17^th Century England was a lousy time and place to be female is much different than offering that as conclusive scholarship Hamlet was written by a downtrodden damsel.

The evidence proffered for these various ideas lies in part on similarities between the characters and events of the supposed clandestine author. Or in alleged similarities between Shakespeare’s works and the chosen candidate’s. There are also secret codes and cryptographic hints the true author sprinkled throughout the tragedies and comedies. Coming up with or embracing these ideas depend on one’s level of mental agility and desire to believe.

Evidence for Shakespearean authorship is much more mundane, but much stronger. Despite assertions he was merely a literary agent or transcriber, his contemporaries described him as a playwright. A monument at his village church identifies him as a writer and compares him to Virgil and Socrates. Also, an unpublished collaborative play, “Sir Thomas More,” was discovered in the 20^th Century, with 20 percent of the script in Shakespeare’s handwriting. This included lined-out passages and inserted words, showing Shakespeare was revising the work, not just transcribing it.

Besides the quill and pen evidence, there are also modern-day proofs. Ward Elliott and Robert Valenza conducted a stylometric study that used computer programs to compare Shakespeare’s writing style to dozens of alternate candidates. They determined Shakespeare’s work to be consistent, suggesting one author, and found he used fewer relative clauses and more hyphens, feminine endings, and run-on lines than the others. Elliott and Valenza determined that none of the tested claimants could have written Romeo and Juliet or the 37 other plays.

Proponents resort to negative evidence, such as Shakespeare’s will not mentioning his shares of the Globe Theatre. They also point out that the Bard wasn’t much-traveled, but Shakespeare’s works show little interest in geography. He had nautical journeys that would be impossible and armies completing their march in an unrealistically rapid time. For Shakespeare, it was important what was happening and to whom, not where it was taking place.

Doubters also point out the plays’ deference to royalty and suggest the commoner Shakespeare would have been more sympathetic to the simple man. Yet Shakespeare’s themes, like his times, stressed the inevitability of providence and fate. Kings were designed to rule, subjects to follow. Typical was Hamlet noting that, “There’s a divinity that shapes our ends.”

Shakespeare’s genius sprouted not from pedagogical or didactic roots, but in his understanding of people. Or as Samuel Johnson more ostentatiously put it, he had the “vigilance of observation and accuracy of distinction, which books and precepts cannot confer.”

Evidence that Shakespeare wrote the plays includes his name on the title pages, testimony from contemporaries, official records, and computer analysis. These proofs exist for no other candidate. Depending on one’s viewpoint, this is overwhelming evidence for either Shakespearean authorship or a conspiracy.

Conspiracy theories are continually being churned, but usually out of sight on the fringes. This arrangement seems to satisfy both those manufacturing the theories and the rest of us. But the theory centering on Jade Helm 15 has come to the surface. Like a nocturnal, threatened Madagascar beetle, it’s so rare to behold one in its full exposure. Yet here it is, germinating in the form of sloppy dry-erase boards, unhinged eyes, and obligatory Third Reich references: http://tinyurl.com/o7se37r

For three months this summer, U.S. Army Special Operations Command will conduct a training exercise in the southwest. That’s the official line. The unofficial line is that the government is preparing to implement martial law.

Chuck Norris wrote, “It’s neither over-reactionary nor conspiratorial to call into question or ask for transparency about Jade Helm 15 or any other government activity.” Norris is correct. That is just asking a question and petitioning the government for redress of grievance. To overreact and be conspiratorial requires responding to a detailed explanation from an Army special operations public affairs officer by telling him you don’t believe a word he said. That was the response one redneck gave to Lt. Col. Mark Lastoria after Lastoria explained Jade Helm’s mission and scope to townspeople in Bastrop County, Texas.

Overreacting and a conspiratorial mindset also involves loosely tying together whatever pieces you can scrounge up to fit your story. Appealing to ignorance and raising questions without seeking answers or being satisfied by reasonable responses are other characteristics.

Fueling much of the Jade Helm conspiracy is the map of the training area, which is broken down into areas controlled by notional armies and paramilitary units. Because conservative states Texas and Utah are labeled “hostile,” this raised concern that President Obama was plotting to squelch the opposition. This highlights the selective thinking necessary to make a conspiracy theory work. Republicans control the legislative and executive branches in Nevada and Arizona, but these states were not deemed hostile on the map drawn by martial law minions.

While continually raising questions of the government, media, and other entities, conspiracy theorists seldom hold their own kind to the same standard. For instance, if Jade Helm is a plot to impose martial law, why would the Obama administration publicly announce its existence and lose the element of surprise?

It is good to question the government and it is advantageous to live in a country that allows it. But the distrust in this case is unfounded. We should be wary of police militarization, but not of military militarization. We should be concerned about warrantless NSA searches, but not of training consistent with the Constitution. We should object to the DEA tactic of seizure without trial, but not of using land after consultation with and approval of landowners and local governments.

If we assume that everything that comes from the government is nefarious, we end up like Dave Hodges at commonsenseshow.com. He opens his Jade Helm coverage with this line:

“One day, we are going to awaken to the reality that our country is no more. There will be no United States, no Constitution, and no civil liberties. National armies will bring lethal force against any and all who resist.”

He doesn’t express concern that this might happen, but insists that it will, which means he will see everything through this doomsday lens.

That’s why Lt. Col. Lastoria, with a name, title, experience, and expertise is dismissed, while credence is given to this report: “My sources, who have current connections to Special Operations Forces leadership, have been told by their former colleagues that the field command leadership of Jade Helm is being kept in the dark as to the full scope and true purpose of Jade Helm.” So some guy tells him that he knows some other guy who says it’s a big secret, and this is presented as reliable information.

A good conspiracy morsel will be tantalizing, fearful, and leave the theorist hungering for more. There always has to be something else being exposed and something more sinister lurking. And though it never quite arrives, it’s always imminent, always on the horrible horizon.

In this vein, Hodges continues: “The commanders are extremely concerned about what is coming and what the Jade Helm leadership and their men are going to be ordered to do. Some military types and their former colleagues have deduced that Jade Helm is about controlling civil unrest.”

With this way of thinking, anything can be tied together. In this case, Hodges finds a connection between a Navy and Army active duty exercise in the Southwest and a Marine Reserve drill in Michigan. In the Michigan drill, Danish and U.S .troops train together, which is a very common occurrence among allied nations.

But Hodges concludes this proves the government has backup plans in case American soldiers won’t kill U.S. citizens. He asks, “Will American commanders and their soldiers comply with the illegal order to fire upon American citizens, or will they have to resort to the use of foreign assets? The appearance of foreign troops on our soil clearly speaks to the fact that the leadership behind Jade Helm is hedging their bets.”

To summarize, training exercises in the southwest and Midwest are proof Danes will kill you. And we thought we had survived the Viking invasion of North America.

Hodges wasn’t through connecting the demented dots. Last week, U.S. military installations upgraded their threat condition from Alpha to Bravo. The government attributed this to ISIS, but Hodges knew better. “The best way to get U.S. soldiers to carry out the use of deadly force against Americans is to issue these orders in an atmosphere surrounded by great fear and apprehension,” he assured us, surprisingly in lower case. Hodges further asserts that Jade Helm participants will kill the power grid, with the U.S. blaming Iran and North Korea.

Hodges may soon find himself of the receiving end of such accusations. Now that Jade Helm is so public, it will have a short shelf life among the most hardened conspiracy theorists. They will consider it a distraction from something even darker, and sites like Hodges that are “exposing” Jade Helm will be part of the government cover-up. And I have that on good authority from a source who knows a guy who knows a guy.

For versatility, few conspiracy theories can match the one centering on behemoth inhabitants of ancient North America. The idea appeals to various stripes of neo-Nazis, fundamentalist Christians, Edgar Cayce devotees, alien visitation proponents, cryptozoologists, and the garden-variety conspiracy theorist.

The idea that giants roamed the plains and hills was fairly popular in the era of circus freaks, sensationalist headlines, and hoaxes such as Piltdown Man and the Cardiff Giant. The reports purported the existence of a race or species of humanoid giants, usually advertised as eight to 12 feet tall, though some of the more daring made the 50 Foot Woman more than just a 1950s B Movie.

The concept went mostly dormant in the mid-20th Century, but found new life when Jim Vieira presented his “findings” in a TED interview. The condensed Cliff’s Notes version is that scientists found massive skeletons in burial mounds in the 19th Century, but that the government ordered them destroyed, with the Smithsonian doing the bulk of the bone crushing. This assertion gained some traction in various subcultures, but exploded when TED, after realizing that several unscientific and unsubstantiated claims had been aired, pulled the interview. What had been a minor scrape became a full-on bloody gush for the conspiracy piranhas. Clearly, THEY had gotten to TED.

For the more level-headed, there were practical reasons for a serious website to remove the interview. Vieria made several science errors, such as ascibing the lack of any present-day giant bones to them having not been mummified. In fact, skeletal preservation and mummification and separate processes. He also insinuated that stone had been carbon-dated, which is impossible. Further, he cited Mayan writings as proof of the giants, even though interpretation has revealed the writings to be of births, coronations, and wars.

One accuracy was the locations cited. There are burial mounds through Ohio and farther east that were common in the 19th Century, and dozens of persons could be buried in the same mound. As to why long-deceased giants would be of concern to the modern-day federal government, that depends on which conspiracy theory subset one subscribes to.

For the religious fundamentalists, behemoth bones mesh with Genesis 6:4, which references giants cavorting about Earth. This vindication of the Bible, combined with the hole it would punch in Darwinism, is too much for the evil secular worldly government to handle. In neo-Nazi lore, the red hair becomes blonde, the Asiatic giants become white, and they are examples of the supreme Aryan race, which our race-mixing government could never tolerate. Edgar Cayce devotees claim the unearthed skulls had horns, consistent with the mixing of man and animal that appeared to him in visions. UFO enthusiasts agree the creatures were hybrids, but of aliens and homo sapiens. For cryptozoologists, the bones are proof of Bigfoot or his ancestors.

The most specific reason I found for the cover-up came from myteriousworld.com. It insists that Smithsonian executive John Wesley Powell worried the bones would distract from the plight of the American Indian, since people would no longer think they were the only ones who lost their land, or worse, than the Indians had slaughtered them. Today, “these countless crates of precious truth are lost in the massive Smithsonian Warehouse, guarded by security.” If mysteriousworld.com has any evidence for these theories, it failed to cite it.

Besides the newspaper fabrications, circus displays, and hoaxes, the main evidence cited by believers is that North American Indian tribes had tales of slaying giants. In other words, the proof lies in variants of Jack and the Beanstalk.

The proponents also concluded that the mounds were so large so that a giant could be buried there. The idea that they could instead be used to bury dozens of normal-sized persons is ignored. Despite the broad range inhabited by this sizable population of massive creatures, they were never referenced by Amerigo Vespucci, Henry Hudson, Francisco Coronado, Hernando de Soto, Sir Francis Drake, Ponce de Leon, or the Vikings.

In a typical newspaper account of the time, the Fort Wayne Sentinel of Nov. 28, 1897, reported that the skulls of 100,000 giants with two rows of teeth apiece were found near Wichita. All of the bones are gone now. In fact, the conspiracy has been so thorough that every trace of the hundreds of thousands of giant skeletons has been excavated, moved, and destroyed or successfully hidden for decades. Try competing with that, Grassy Knoll.

While I regularly use the term “conspiracy theory,” I concede my use of the phrase is too restrictive. Unless one man pulled off 9/11 by himself, the attacks were a conspiracy, and any points made to bolster ideas about what group did it, would be a theory.

But until somebody comes up with something better, we’re stuck with using that phrase to describe the Tinfoil Hat Brigade. Skepticism and questioning of the media and government is healthy, and has led to reforms in both. But automatically ascribing nefarious behavior to every government and media action is as bad as blind faith in them.

Depending on one’s level of immersion in them, conspiracy theories can become the automatic explanation for any event. On the most extreme conspiracy theory site, nodisinfo.com, 100 percent of media reports are labeled false. Not only are shootings, natural disasters, and diseases declared to be hoaxes, but so too are articles about cannibalism in the heartland or a bus colliding with a semi. According to this site, anything in the press is a lie. Other than demanding complete fealty to nodisinfo.com, the site’s maintainers and proponents completely reject all media and government accounts.

Even those who stop short of this extreme are subject to swallowing unfounded ideas. Once a person sees authorities as necessarily deceptive, conspiracy theories become more plausible. This can lead to oxymoronic conclusions, such as a person who insists Princess Diana faked her death will argue an hour later that she was murdered.

People find comfort in patterns, and conspiracy theorists distort this idea by connecting the dots of unrelated random events to create something meaningful. The theories appeal to those who feel powerless, and they seek some control over the sinister plotters, even if this is limited to exposing them.

In some ways, a conspiratorial mindset is an exaggeration of the tendency to want an explanation for extraordinary events, especially tragic ones. Refracted sunlight in photos of a space shuttle disaster can be seen as proof that there was an explosive on board. In one image of the John Kennedy assassination, a man is holding an open umbrella on a clear, sunny day. It was a bizarre thing, but nothing monumental, except to those determined to find meaning in it. Ideas were floated that it was a signal for the shooting to commence, or that it was one of the CIA’s poison umbrellas. Eventually, it was learned the umbrella was an antiquated, largely nonsensical protestation of what the man considered Joseph Kennedy’s history of appeasement (Neville Chamberlain usually carried an umbrella).

It is telling that there are seldom conspiracy theories centered on almost-events. Theorists delved deeply into the Umbrella Man’s meaning, and hundreds of books have been written that have pinned the Kennedy assassination on someone other than Lee Harvey Oswald. By contrast, almost no one proffers a Gerald Ford assassination attempt conspiracy theory.

Going back to the opening paragraph, a conspiracy theory can be about something real. Watergate is the most prominent example, and there is strong evidence that the Derringer fired by John Wilkes Booth was the culmination of a multi-person plot. So here are some signs to look for that a conspiracy theory is mistaken. Keep Occam’s Razor in mind and remember that the more grandiose a scheme is, the more unlikely. With regard to the Lincoln assassination, documented plans to kill other administration officials that night were uncovered. The evidence was provided in a courtroom, not amongst shadowy fringe group members, and the guilty were executed. By contrast, a bogus conspiracy theory ties many ideas together, borrowing piecemeal from disparate events to make it fit.

For instance, one of the stranger Sept. 11 claims is that Hollywood referenced the attacks beforehand. There is a passport in the Matrix that expired on Sept. 11, 2001. A Simpsons episode features a bus poster which advertises $9 tickets to New York, with it suggested that the World Trade Centers provide the “11.” In Johnny Bravo, a movie theater announces “Coming Soon” above a poster depicting a burning skyscraper. These are instances of apophenia, which is finding meaning in random patterns, and is a regular feature of conspiracy theories.

Also, bogus conspiracy theories involve impossibly large numbers of people, who would all need to keep silent. Many of the alleged conspiracies would require a cast of hundreds and the plotters would have to be 100 percent of the media and government. Also being maintained would be a pool of thousands of crisis actors. And while the evil overlords have the ability to seamlessly pull off AIDS, assassinations, hurricanes, crack epidemics, shooting hoaxes, and nuclear disasters, they are too incompetent to shut down websites exposing them. Additionally, genuine conspiracies such as Iran-Contra are exposed by the allegedly compliant media and government insiders, not by conspiracy theory groups.

Another feature is the mixing of fact and fiction. Conspiracy theorists might let a truth slip in now and then, but speculation and falsehoods are thrown into the same soup without the difference being acknowledged.

Furthermore, theorists dismiss all government and media accounts, excepting what the theorists consider “gotcha” moments. During a press conference about a California mass shooting, a detective was talking about the importance of training for such events. Instead of saying “which played out here today,” he misspoke and said, “which we played out here today.” A couple of seconds later, another detective put his head in his hand. Theorists touted this as irrefutable proof that the detective had inadvertently exposed the ruse, causing his cohort to facepalm. Theorists did this while simultaneously discounting all other government and media accounts surrounding the shooting.

But the most glaring characteristic of conspiracy theories is considering contrary proof to be part of the conspiracy. When rumors about Barack Obama’s birthplace surfaced in 2008, anyone genuinely seeking proof was satisfied with his release of the Certificate of Live Birth. But for those with a paranoid mindset, this was part of the cover-up, as were the Long Form, newspaper birth announcements, confirmation by factcheck.org, statements by Hawaiian officials, and a 1990 New York Times article listing his birthplace as Hawaii.

When Loretta Fuddy, the official who released the long form, died in a plane crash, theorists joyously note she was the only one of nine onboard who perished. They cited this as proof that Obama had her killed to keep her silent. Had she been the only one to survive, these same people would have asserted Obama spared her as a reward for loyalty. There is an alternative theory that the death was a hoax, but his has scant support among the birthers since it doesn’t fit their predetermined narrative.

It is proper to seek further confirmation, but when uncovered evidence is considered not proof of the truth, but proof of another conspiracy layer, it is unhealthy. In 1954, Marion Keach convinced her minions that aliens would destroy the world at midnight on Dec. 20. Only Keach and her followers would be spared, and they gathered in her home to await rescue by spaceship. When both the apocalypse and the flying emergency vehicle failed to arrive, the cultists concluded that their devotion to the aliens had caused them to spare the planet. Despite clear proof that Keach was wrong about what would happen that night, cognitive dissonance caused the cultists to double down on their beliefs. Doing so is much easier for today’s conspiracy theorist, since the Internet allows them to find sanctuary from any discomforting realities.

Contrails are long, thin clouds left in the wake of flying aircraft. They are caused by condensation of hot airplane exhaust in cold air. How utterly boring. Much more exciting are chemtrails, which disperse noxious chemicals in order to spread some ill-defined nefariousness.

Whether believers consider it a contrail or chemtrail is determined by appearance, durability, and length, though no consensus exists as to just how colorful, lasting, or long it must be.

Exactly what is being dumped is also not agreed upon, nor is the reason for it being done. Speculative reasons include: Building an electromagnetic weapon; concealing the existence of Planet X; environmental poisoning; mind control; population sterilization; spreading respiratory illnesses; and weakening immune systems. If only for variety, I wish conspiracy theorists would for once asribe benevolent behavior to our mysterious overlords. Like say, spraying the masses with liquified LifeSavers.

Supposed beneficiaries of chemtrail spewing include world governments, Monsanto, and the pharmaceutical industry.

If chemtrails were real, they would form immediately behind the aircraft, as happens during crop dusting. Furthermore, if governments, the military, or corporations are poisoning us by air, they are using inefficient methods. Unleashing chemicals at 30,000 feet would cause them to disperse wildly and would exponentially hamper their potency. To engage in this super-villainy properly, find a night free of wind, fly at a low altitude, and use invisible chemicals.

The most frequent distinction attributed to chemtrails is color. If an airplane is flying directly away from a setting or rising sun, the contrail may appear black. This more devilish look excites the believers, but is due to how shadows work. A contrail can block out much of the sun, resulting in this shadow. Another factor is the distance involved, as this negatively impacts depth perception.

Having more than one contrail seemingly visible at once is also presented as evidence of the multiple streaks being chemtrails. However, when high clouds cast shadows onto a contrail, multiple shadows can be produced. As far as lingering contrails, they are usually the result of weather.

Chemtrail evidence is limited to photos of the sky, pictures that are explained by science. There is no evidence of chemical detection, no videos of chemical-spraying commercial jets, and no Top Secret documents revealed. All national governments, airlines, and environmental scientists would have to be complicit in the plot.

One ground photo presented as evidence is of a supposedly vile liquid inside an airplane. However, this is of flight testing equipment, in which tanks of water simulate passenger weight. Despite this being proven years ago, it still has life in the chemtrail believer community.

Just how easily duped chemtrail proponents can be was demonstrated by British citizen Chris Bovey. When his plane had to make an emergency landing to dump excess fuel, Bovey filmed it and uploaded the video with a caption that suggested the craft was being loaded with chemtrails. It topped one million views, with credulous posters calling it proof and chiding disbelievers as fools or shills. For good measure, Bovey concocted a story about being detained upon arrival and having his cell phone confiscated. This riled up the theorists even more, with at least one site calling it irrefutable proof.

Mick West, editor of Metabunk, explained why people can react in such a way: “When they see something that seems to fit their worldview they jump on it.” Bovey added, “This happens because people want to believe it, are so distrusting of the government, and lack basic scientific understanding.”

Of course, there was no fooling the conspiracy theorists, who cleverly sniffed out Bovey as part of the cover-up.