Does this smell like a conspiracy to anyone else?

You could take this to the logical extreme, which is why, of course, the whole thing is pointlessly stupid.

For example: since caring for a baby typically causes a huge amount of stress, and since stress can lead to cancer and illness, therefore caring for a baby is a bad thing. Clearly, we should not try to take care of babies.

Paranoia is not how you should live your life.

edited 11th Oct '11 8:10:46 AM by TotemicHero

To the whole thing, I'm not only skeptical, but already a bit aware of it. Everything is spun, even this. Not to say that there's no truth anymore, since there is, but most people have found out something that has not only saved themselves time, but has actually made them money. The search for truth is dead, and everyone wants their ideas fed back to them. People are easier to control and manipulate when they agree with you, thinks the successful businessman. What better way to get people to agree with you than to feed them back exactly what they want to hear? The best lies are rooted in truth, after all.

It's not so much a conspiracy (despite being, by textbook definition, a conspiracy) as it is a method for people to become more successful and wealthy. After all, since the inception of the Internet as the information super-highway, information has become profitable. If you have it, and can sell it, you can get a lot of return from it. People want answers to this particular problem, and scientists and businesses that control such scientific statistics can give it. They could give the public the correct figures, and probably make a good amount of people angry, or they could spin the truth (that yes, such-and-such may cause cancer at such-and-such rate), handing their consumers exactly what they wanted, even if they didn't know it themselves. It also makes their lives a lil' easier to boot; after all, if your consumers are saying to themselves, "I knew it all along!", they're less likely to ask, "Where exactly did you get this information from?"

@ Blue Ninja;

But yeah, someone made a point about divorce causing stress, which can contribute to bad health. I'm putting the Wi-fi up to the same 'cell phones cause cancer' thing and will continue using my unhealthy Wi-fi.

And yeah, I think conspiracy require more secrecy than this. They're doing it quite openly, and you do corrupt things without running a conspiracy. I'd argue that it's easier to be corrupt without the conspiracy, actually.

Divorce mightn't even cause stress, stress might cause divorce - because obviously something is stressing you out, and it could be your bad relationship. That's what we call a confounder.