[bassrattle]

When Alex Jones' auction is on the top of HN, but his most famous claim is right there with it -- Atrazine in the water turning the frogs gay

[freeone3000]

75% of an exposed pop stop producing testosterone. 10% of the pop shift from male to female. These frogs still mate successfully with male frogs, and even produce male offspring — it turns the frogs trans :)

(https://news.berkeley.edu/2010/03/01/frogs/)

[bassrattle]

Right! So it's worse than altering their behavior, it causes physical sexual changes

[cluckindan]

That’s a bit of twist: in fact amphibians, like humans, start out all female - atrazine just interferes with the development of male characteristics, making male frogs develop intersex or even completely female characteristics.

[IG_Semmelweiss]

Can you elaborate on humans starting out all female ? Are you talking about the women's egg chromosomes ? I wouldn't call that a human.. an embryo has a strong claim to being a human, but an egg ?

[graemep]

I do not know what his claim is, but the the fact is it turns them female or intersex, not gay.

[gklitz]

If someone is claiming that global climate change has melted all the arctic ice and created a Vulcan into spring up in lower Manhatten, they are a crackpot. But that doesn’t mean global climate change isn’t real or isn’t bad.

Two can be true. Atrazine can be bad, and Alex Jones claims about it can be outrageous unfounded conspiracy theories.

[devops99]

He does call out a lot of corruption, much of it prima facie. And given how much there is, who conspired with who else (or not) is neither here nor there.

Alex and the circa 2010 Occupy Wall Street crowd have a lot more in common with each other than the "other side", which would be the warmongering "Neocons". But this might be more than some will want to contend with cognitively. Easier to bamboozle someone than tell them they have been bamboozled, and all that.

[cmrdporcupine]

The issue I think there is never the specific claim but the manner in which Jones makes these pronouncements linking a fact like this to broader conspiracies and politics. That somehow this shit is a left-wing / liberal conspiracy blah blah blah when it's just run of the mill (and far more insidious and systematic) corporate malfeasance in the search of profits.

[devops99]

He espouses a lot that much of the modern "left wing", or at least what is sold as "left wing" (but is not our typical progressive/liberal friend we know), comes right out of technocratic think tanks.

It's in there, among all the other shouting.

[logicchains]

It's funny, he was almost correct, but in actuality Atrazine turns frogs transgender: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2842049/ .

[graemep]

In fact it makes them change sex, not gender (gender is a cultural construct, so only applies to humans).

It makes frogs that would otherwise develop as male become female or intersex instead.

[josefresco]

> he was almost correct

That's the key element to effective conspiracy theories. A thread of truth, exaggerated, twisted and manipulated for maximum virality. Debunkers are met with links like the one you provided, and that's typically enough to discourage further debate because the truth is boring and a lot of hard work. And who wants to spend time trying to debunk when the believers don't want the truth!