Rick Singer, the man behind the notorious "Varsity Blues" college admissions bribery scandal, was sentenced Wednesday to 3 1/2 years in prison and ordered to pay more than $19 million — about half as restitution to the IRS and the other half as forfeitures of money and assets.

A new study published in Social Psychology investigated if there was a relationship between workplace bullying and belief in conspiracy theories. In a two-part study, one part correlational and one part experimental, the findings indicate that when someone is a victim of workplace bullying, they become more likely to believe in conspiracy theories. This research provides new clues into how people begin to believe in conspiracy theories.

US conspiracy theorist Alex Jones has been ordered to pay $49.3m (£41m) in damages after falsely claiming a 2012 school shooting was a hoax. A jury in Texas ruled the radio host must pay $45.2m in punitive damages, in addition to $4.1m in compensatory damages they awarded a day earlier.

A quarter of Canadians believe in online conspiracy theories, an expert on radicalization and terrorism told a parliamentary committee Thursday. David Morin, a professor at the Université de Sherbrooke, said a poll conducted for an upcoming report he is preparing for the Quebec government found that 9 to 10 per cent of Canadians strongly believe in conspiracy theories, while another 15 per cent moderately believe them.

The label “conspiracy theory” is often slapped on unsubstantiated ideas. But does labelling something a conspiracy theory actually discredit it? A new paper in the British Journal of Psychology suggests not. Karen M. Douglas at the University of Kent and colleagues find that people call an idea that they already consider unbelievable a “conspiracy theory” — rather than being influenced by that term to disbelieve it.

The unexpected romance blossoming between SNL comedian Pete Davidson and Kim Kardashian has inspired hundreds of gossip headlines, frantically analyzing trivialities, from hand-holding to hickies. On TikTok, however, fans are just as suspicious as they are curious.

Connecticut judge rules Jones guilty in fourth defamation case

In a ‘Cosmo’ exclusive report, women on both sides—the former believers and the doctors they’re turning to—show us what it takes to escape.

A QAnon believer from California admitted killing his children with a spearfishing gun this week because he believed they would "grow into monsters." Anthony Beckett apologized to his pregnant girlfriend as he tried to force her head underwater. "I need to do this, I need to do this," the soon-to-be father of three from Middlesbrough, England, told his stunned partner who was taking a bath, according to court documents seen by Insider.

Belief in conspiracies about the COVID-19 pandemic increased through the early months of the U.S. outbreak among people who reported being heavy users of conservative and social media, a study by Annenberg Public Policy Center researchers has found.

Foreign-based actors, principally in China and Russia, are spreading online disinformation rooted in QAnon conspiracy theories, fueling a movement that has become a mounting domestic terrorism threat, according to new analysis of online propaganda by a security firm.

Facebook does not need any more bad publicity. The company is currently being publicly scorned after more than 500 million users had their personal information leaked. It has also been faced with an antitrust suit endorsed by more than 40 states since last year, with reports alleging that CEO Mark Zuckerberg would intimidate potential competitors.

It is 20 years since Jon Ronson wrote Them, his eye-popping investigation into conspiracy theorists. Now, in a world awash with tales of paedophile elites and puppet masters, is he any closer to understanding it all?

People will always be interested in conspiracy theories. They need a tool kit for discriminating among different fringe ideas.

One woman's belief that there's a global conspiracy against gingers could just change the way you see the world.

From a folkloristic perspective, QAnon may not be based in fact but is not necessarily baseless.

Let's say you hate 5G and genuinely believe it causes cancer or spreads COVID-19, despite there being no evidence to support those wild conspiracies. To shield 5G's myriad evils, then, you put your WiFi router in a metallic box that "blocks about 90 percent" of the signal. There! Now you're instantly protected from those treacherous waves of radiation!

Americans are embracing dangerous conspiratorial beliefs, from QAnon to coronavirus denial.

After popular pirate sites started disappearing from Google's top results, the same now appears to be happening at DuckDuckGo as well.