Tornadoes Caused by Military?: Recent Events Fuel Conspiracy Theories

The High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program, run by the University of Alaska and supported by the Navy and Air Force, shoots radio waves into the upper atmosphere to study how those waves are affected and develop better communications technologies. But conspiracy theorists see it as some kind of doomsday device causing havoc across the planet.

Experts say the idea that the research could cause a rain shower, let alone a tornado or an earthquake, is ridiculous.

"The closest thing to truth is that scientists are experimenting with seeding clouds to induce rain, but there's no science behind the idea that the government can induce tornados," said Benjamin Radford, managing editor of "Skeptical Inquirer" magazine and a research fellow with the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, a non-profit educational organization.

"This superstitious thinking dates back hundreds of years," he said. "Before people knew why disasters happen, they could attribute it to the gods. These days, they attribute it to powerful unseen government forces."

There are websites dedicated to examining and debunking conspiracy theories -- but believers will not be deterred.

Indeed, the so-called "birthers," who claim President Obama was born overseas and is a real-life Manchurian Candidate sent to destroy the U.S., are still at it, even though Obama released a copy of his "long-form" Hawaii birth certificate last month.

The conspiracy theorists now claim the birth certificate is a forgery. The new book "Where's the Birth Certificate," which claims the president is not a natural-born citizen, is No. 50 on Amazon.com's best-seller list.

Kay said one of the "depressing" aspects of his research was that he was never able to win an argument with the more than 300 conspiracy theorists and advocates he interviewed.

"It totally destroyed my faith that rational discourse will prevail," he said.

"The signature trait of conspiracy theorists is that they respond to contrary evidence by simply enlarging the conspiracy," he said. "So if I said, 'Read the 9/11 Commission report,' they said, 'The 9/11 commissioners are part of the conspiracy.' ... That kind of argument is bulletproof. There was nothing I could say that could change their minds."