A culture of weird science
I had a strange thought a few weeks ago. I’d heard of the abiotic origin theory of oil (that oil is generated from deep in the earth via chemical reactions unrelated to organic decomposition and is thus infinitely renewable). I also understood that the concept plays well in conspiracy circles, so I never really looked into it too deeply. At MNTL it’s important for us to look for answers and after a few minutes of googling I had to wonder… if the earliest life in the fossil record is from the archaen era, then why is oil found so much deeper? Being who I am I wouldn’t let this rest, so I did more digging. But it illustrates how dangerous our current time is in terms of misinformation. Unless you have rigor and experience you might not know how to draw out the proper questions to come to understand if your conclusions are correct. This Dunning-Kruger twilight zone is a place where too many people get stuck, leading to a crisis in public trust of scientific institutions.
Let’s unpack abiotic oil as an roadmap for how and why we’re so bogged-down in pseudoscience.
It can start with an odd late-night internet encounter: you stumble on a forum where someone insists crude oil isn’t made of dead plankton or (erroneously) dinosaurs at all. No, they say, oil bubbles up from deep inside the Earth, practically replenishing itself like a magical underground spring. If you feel a skeptical eyebrow rising (maybe both eyebrows, and maybe a bemused smirk forming), you’re not alone. This idea, abiotic oil theory, is an alluring notion: an end to fossil fuel finiteness, a poke in the eye to “Big Science,” and a free pass to “roll coal” in your F150 forever without worrying about running out at the gas pump. Unfortunately (or fortunately, for fans of reality), science doesn’t buy it. Mainstream geologists overwhelmingly agree that oil is a fossil fuel derived from ancient organic matter, and the evidence supporting this biotic origin is about as subtle as a tar pit full of prehistoric algae.
Who’s Behind the Abiotic Oil Theory?
The idea isn’t totally new—in fact, it goes back a few centuries. As early as the 1600s, a guy named Georgius Agricola suggested an inorganic origin for “rock oil.” Fast forward to 1804: the famed explorer Alexander von Humboldt observed oil seeps in Venezuela and speculated that petroleum was some kind of “distillation from great depth” issuing from Earth’s primitive rocks. Even Dmitri Mendeleev—the periodic table genius—weighed in around 1877, theorizing that oil formed from chemical reactions deep underground rather than squished fish and ferns. In the 19th century, this was a reasonable hypothesis to explore because geology and biology were still coming into their own. But as evidence for a biological origin accumulated, most scientists moved on.
However, the abiotic idea refused to stay dead (zombie theories are a thing in science, as in horror movies). In the 20th century, it found new life in the Soviet Union. Soviet geologists, somewhat isolated from Western science during the Cold War, revisited the concept with ideological gusto. In 1951, geologist Nikolai Kudryavtsev studied the massive Athabasca tar sands in Canada and concluded there was no conceivable source rock (no enough buried fossils) to account for so much oil—so to him, it must have bubbled up from Earth’s depths. Other Soviet scientists like Petr Kropotkin and Vladimir Porfir’ev followed suit, publishing papers (mostly in Russian) claiming that oil could form deep in the Earth’s crust and migrate upwards. This became known as the Russian-Ukrainian school of abiotic oil. It was partly driven by national pride and the desire to demonstrate self-sufficiency—the subtext was, “Westerners say oil will run out; nonsense, Mother Russia’s got endless oil made by the planet itself.” Indeed, even today most of the (few) geologists who still support abiotic oil are in Russia, and even there they’re a vocal minority, propped up more by ideology than data.
The theory might have languished in obscure Soviet journals, except an unlikely hero/villain emerged: Thomas Gold, an Austrian-born astrophysicist at Cornell (and a world-class contrarian). Gold had a reputation for bold, outside-the-box ideas—some brilliant, some bonkers. In the 1970s through 1990s, he took the abiotic ball and ran with it, refining the hypothesis and publishing in English so the West would pay attention. Gold’s version, often called the “deep hot biosphere” theory, was a twist: he proposed that hydrocarbons (like methane and oil) are generated deep in Earth’s mantle, and as they seep upward, they get colonized by subterranean microbes. Those microbes, in turn, leave behind tell-tale biological molecules in the oil. In other words, Gold tried to explain why petroleum contains biomarkers (compounds clearly from living organisms) without conceding that the oil itself came from ancient life. He basically said the oil came first (from abiotic processes), and life followed—microbes feasting on the rising oil, like cosmic-scale bacteria at an all-you-can-eat buffet. It was a clever attempt to have it both ways. And Gold didn’t just theorize from an armchair; he convinced investors and even the Swedish government to fund a deep drilling project in 1986 at Siljan Ring in Sweden, a site chosen for ancient granite bedrock he thought might hold abiotic oil.
What happened? They drilled down over six kilometers. The result: some natural gas and about 80 barrels of oil (a pittance) were extracted from the crystalline rock. Gold heralded this as a success—proof, he claimed, that oil could be found in granite, not just sedimentary strata. But as one might say, that’s spin, not science. Independent geologists analyzed the site and pointed out that the area had known oil seeps from nearby sedimentary rocks (containing real fossil fuel) and that glacial action had likely carried bits of those sediments into cracks in the granite. In fact, locals had long found tarry residue in that granite which they used to seal Viking boats—but that tar most likely migrated from sedimentary layers that were eroded away. Essentially, Gold’s well tapped a tiny reservoir of ordinary oil that had leaked into the fractured granite from above. It was not some vast deep-earth gusher.
The abiotic oil theory has also been promoted by a motley crew of media personalities: from late-night paranormal radio host George Noory to famous American conspiracy theorist Jerome Corsi, and even the loudest voice in talk-radio conservatism, Rush Limbaugh. These folks are not researchers; they’re pundits or evangelists for the idea. Corsi co-authored a 2005 book Black Gold Stranglehold that flat-out calls the scientific consensus on oil origin a fraud. The book’s blurb claims “fraudulent science has been sold to the American people in order to enslave them: the belief that oil is a fossil fuel and a finite resource.” Instead, Corsi insists “authoritative research” shows oil is constantly generated inside Earth and just bubbles up, meaning we’ll never run out. If that sounds like a convenient story for anyone who finds talk of resource limits or climate action bothersome, you’re starting to see the appeal.
Overwhelming Evidence
Reality check… The modern scientific consensus on petroleum’s origin is that it’s overwhelmingly biogenic – a fancy way of saying it comes from once-living things. In plain English, oil is mostly made from the ancient remains of organisms (plankton, algae, plants, and yes, some dinosaurs too, though they’re a minor ingredient) that got buried, cooked, and compressed over millions of years. This isn’t just a guess or a “majority opinion” – it’s supported by mountains of evidence from geology, chemistry, and physics. By examining where oil is found, what it’s made of, and how it behaves, scientists have assembled a picture of petroleum formation that leaves the abiotic notion with little to no wiggle room. Let’s unpack a few key evidence points:
Where Oil is Found: Oil accumulations are overwhelmingly found in sedimentary basins – the geological equivalent of compost heaps, where tons of organic debris were deposited in ancient oceans and swamps. If you look at a map of the world’s oil fields, they are almost all sitting in sedimentary rock layers (think sandstone, limestone, shale) that also contain fossils and organic-rich source rocks. Meanwhile, the crystalline basement rocks (granite, etc.) have next to no oil, except in cases where oil has migrated there from adjacent sedimentary layers. This geographic pattern strongly indicates oil’s connection to former life. As one science review put it, abiotic processes undoubtedly can create some hydrocarbons (like methane) here and there, but those mechanisms “can hardly account for the quantity, diversity and location of oil occurrences on Earth.” By contrast, the idea that oil comes from sedimentary organic matter (i.e. long-dead organisms) is “widely demonstrated” by natural observations, lab analyses, and experiments. Translation: We find oil exactly where we’d expect if it came from lots of dead stuff buried in sediment – and not where we’d expect if it percolated up from deep within the mantle.
What Oil Is Made Of: Oil isn’t a single substance but a mix of many hydrocarbons – molecules made of hydrogen and carbon in various structures. Critically, embedded in that mix are molecules known as biomarkers (or “geochemical fossils”). These are complex organic compounds that are directly identifiable as remnants of living organisms. For example, oils contain things like porphyrins (related to chlorophyll), steranes (derivatives of cholesterol-like molecules from cell membranes), and hopanes (from bacterial cell walls). Such compounds have structures extremely specific to biology – they look just like molecules found in algae, bacteria, and plants, except slightly altered by time and heat. Some are so robust that they survive largely intact from the original organism into the oil. One research compilation noted that we have discovered a huge number of these biomarker molecules in petroleum, “derived from or even strictly identical to a molecule known in living organisms.” These biomarkers are true molecular fossils. It’s very hard to imagine an abiotic process – some random high-pressure chemical reaction in the Earth – that conveniently produces dozens of different intricate molecules that just happen to match those made by microbes and plankton. And yet virtually every crude oil sample worldwide contains such biomarkers. The abiotic theory has to perform contortions here: proponents like Gold said, “oh, the oil itself is non-biological, but it picked up these molecules from deep microbes.” However, if that were the case, we would expect to find some oil, somewhere, that doesn’t have these biological signatures – a “smoking gun” of pure abiotic oil. We don’t. No commercially significant oil deposit has been found devoid of biomarkers or other signs of organic origin. The consistent chemical fingerprint of life is a deathblow to the abiotic hypothesis.
Chemical and Isotopic Fingerprints: Beyond specific molecules, oil’s overall chemical makeup and isotopic ratios align with a biogenic origin. For instance, the carbon in oil has a ratio of carbon-13 to carbon-12 isotopes that is typical of organic matter (life tends to prefer the lighter carbon-12, leaving a tell-tale isotopic signature in its remains). Additionally, oil often contains nitrogen, sulfur, and trace metals in patterns consistent with marine sediments (where the plankton lived and died) – not with deep mantle material. Abiotic theorists sometimes point to the presence of helium or other gases in oil as evidence of a deep Earth contribution. It’s true that helium (a noble gas produced by radioactive decay in Earth’s crust and mantle) is found in some oil fields, but that doesn’t mean the oil came from the mantle. Helium is a tiny, mobile atom that can diffuse up and mix into reservoirs; its presence “together” with oil is no smoking gun. Geologists have shown that oil fields can pick up stray helium from underlying rocks without any trouble – it’s like wind blowing a few stray balloons into a pool party, it doesn’t mean the party originated in a balloon factory. Meanwhile, all the major components of oil align with an origin from cooked organic matter.
Thermodynamics and Laboratory Experiments: Could the Earth’s mantle cook up oil? Abiotic proponents suggest reactions (like Fischer-Tropsch type syntheses) where simple gases (methane, carbon oxides, hydrogen) under high pressure form heavier hydrocarbons. And indeed, in high-pressure lab experiments, scientists have managed to produce some complex hydrocarbons from inorganic constituents. Soviet researchers reported such results, and modern experiments have occasionally formed a bit of oil-like substances from marble, iron oxide, water, and so on at mantle-like pressures. However – and this is crucial – scale and stability are major issues. The amount of hydrocarbons produced in such experiments is tiny, and there’s no evidence the process could generate large oil reservoirs. More importantly, any hydrocarbons formed deep in the mantle would have to migrate upward to shallower depths to accumulate. On the way up, they would traverse zones of lower pressure but still high temperature, which are decidedly unkind to complex molecules. The likely outcome is that any oil heavier than methane would crack or break down long before reaching the surface, reverting to gas or carbon residue. Geologists note that at depths below about 15,000 feet (around 4.5 km), the Earth is typically so hot that oil breaks apart; that’s why even normal oil reservoirs have an effective “depth limit.” You simply don’t find big pools of oil deeper than this – it’s all overcooked into natural gas or graphite. So the abiotic theory asks us to believe that somehow vast quantities of hydrocarbons were generated in even hotter regions (deeper down) and yet remained intact all the way up to shallower crust. This defies what we know about hydrocarbon chemistry under extreme conditions. Decades of oil exploration have drilled millions of wells guided by the traditional fossil fuel model, and they reliably find oil in the expected places (sedimentary basins, certain depth windows, near source rocks). If oil really came from the mantle, we’d find more oil near the mantle or in crust with no source rocks – but oil companies have drilled plenty of deep holes (in places like the Gulf of Mexico, or ultra-deep exploratory wells) and have not struck massive abiotic oil gushers. As one tongue-in-cheek summary puts it, geologists “learned through experience that you can’t find petroleum anywhere close to the mantle… and decades’ worth of successful oil exploration has upheld the mainstream biotic model”.
Given all this evidence, the scientific community’s verdict is clear: abiotic oil is at best a marginal phenomenon. Sure, some methane on Earth is abiotic (for example, a bit is made by volcanoes or deep water-rock reactions, just as we see on Saturn’s moon Titan where life never existed. But when it comes to the vast oil reserves that power our society, study after study shows they are the legacy of ancient life, not primordial mineral stew. In the words of a 2006 review, “scientific evidence overwhelmingly supports a biogenic origin for most of the world’s petroleum deposits”. And even Thomas Gold tacitly admitted that biological molecules in oil needed explaining. He just got the direction wrong: those molecules aren’t later contamination by deep microbes, they’re the very source material.
You might wonder: if the evidence is so stacked, why does anyone still argue about this? To find out, we have to leave the realm of geology and venture into the depths of human beliefs and conspiracies – where evidence can take a backseat to ideology and fear.
Abiotic Oil as Conspiracy Theory
It turns out the abiotic oil hypothesis has a second life as a conspiracy theory in certain circles. What started as a geological conjecture morphed into a meme of sorts, spread by those who distrust establishment science. It’s a pattern we’ve seen before: a fringe idea gets adopted by people who feel “the experts” are hiding the truth. In the grand carnival of conspiracy thinking, abiotic oil sits at a booth not far from flat Earth, fake moon landings, and “free energy” devices suppressed by shadowy forces. Indeed, lists of popular conspiracy theories often include the claim that Big Oil and Big Science are conspiring to hide the secret of abiotic oil. The notion usually goes like this: Oil companies know oil is virtually limitless but pretend it’s scarce to keep prices high and control the market; scientists know oil isn’t biological but cling to that story to prop up the “climate change hoax” and get research grants. It’s a heady mix of anti-corporate and anti-science paranoia – basically suggesting that everyone is in on the lie, from geologists to OPEC ministers. (If that sounds implausible to you, congratulations, you have a healthy skepticism. Managing a global conspiracy among scientists is about as easy as herding cats… with PhDs.)
What’s fascinating (and a bit troubling) is how abiotic oil belief often cohabits with other conspiratorial or pseudoscientific beliefs. Rarely do you find someone who only dissents on this one technical point. More often, the same individuals or groups denying the biological origin of oil are also denying climate change, evolution, or even basic astronomy. For example, some creationist publications have toyed with abiotic oil because it fits their narrative of a young Earth – if oil can form quickly from non-life, you don’t need millions of years of biodegradation (though even most young-Earth creationists haven’t fully embraced it). And far-right conspiracy outlets have promoted abiotic oil to assert that scarcity is a myth and environmentalism is a scam. When radio host Rush Limbaugh told his millions of listeners that “there’s more oil in the Earth than we could ever use” and that it’s not dinosaurs but a “natural replenishing” process, he was echoing abiotic oil tropes – conveniently aligned with his distrust of environmental science.
The link to flat Earth is more thematic than literal – I’m not saying flat-earthers have big opinions on oil, but the mindset is similar. In both cases, there’s a rejection of long-established science in favor of a self-styled “I see through the lies” narrative. It’s the idea that thousands of experts must be wrong or deceptive, and a band of internet sleuths has figured out the real truth. The Venn diagram of conspiracy theories shows considerable overlap; a person inclined to believe NASA has an army of “ice wall guards” preventing us from seeing the edge of the flat Earth is also likely to believe climate scientists are faking data or that oil geologists are either idiots or liars. It’s a general distrust of authority and expertise writ large, often fueled by misinformation online.
One strong driver here is mistrust due to politics and ideology, which leads us directly to climate change.
Climate Change Denial and the Infinite Oil Fantasy
Why do so many abiotic oil proponents also fervently deny climate change? In short, because accepting climate change means accepting that burning fossil fuels is dangerous and finite – and that idea is anathema to their ideological worldview. For some, it’s almost an instinctive fear of the implications of climate science. If global warming is real and caused by us, then we may need government regulation, international cooperation, maybe even limits on consumption – all things that certain political and economic ideologies abhor. It’s much more comforting (and convenient) to believe climate change is a hoax and that we can keep on drilling and driving forever. The abiotic oil theory slots perfectly into this narrative: it reassures that oil is limitless (“don’t worry about peak oil or running out, the Earth makes more all the time!”) and it undercuts the urgency of shifting to renewable energy (“fossil fuel isn’t even ‘fossil’, and if it’s not running out, those climate alarmists just want control”). In effect, abiotic oil enthusiasts often see climate change not as a scientific reality but as a conspiracy – a manufactured crisis intended to achieve some nefarious goal like socialism or global government. Believing oil is endless and harmless goes hand in hand with believing climate change is a lie.
Let’s break down the ideological components at play:
Free-market Fundamentalism: Many climate change deniers are staunch free-market conservatives or libertarians. They espouse a “small government, anti-regulation” creed. To them, climate change is suspect because the solutions often involve regulation of industry or government intervention in the economy (e.g. emissions limits, carbon taxes). It’s not that these folks woke up one day and said “I want to deny physics”; rather, they perceive (often correctly) that if the mainstream climate science is right, it implies actions that clash with their political values. Psychologically, it’s easier to reject the science than to overhaul one’s deeply held ideology. Climate denial often stems from a strong ideological commitment to laissez-faire economics and opposition to any regulations that climate policy would bring. This is “implicatory denial” at work – rejecting a scientific finding because it implies something one refuses to accept. So if one holds a belief that human ingenuity and markets can overcome any resource limitation, then talk of finite oil or catastrophic climate fallout is almost offensive to their worldview. Abiotic oil theory scratches that itch: it implies human innovation (or natural bounty) will ensure endless supply, and thus no need for government to meddle in energy markets.
Defense of a “Way of Life”: Climate science can feel like an attack on our modern high-consumption lifestyle – big cars, cheap fuel, endless growth. Some climate deniers explicitly defend what they call the “American way of life,” defined by abundant energy use and ever-expanding prosperity, against what they see as the dour preachings of environmentalism. If oil is abiotic and inexhaustible, then this way of life isn’t in jeopardy from resource depletion. Additionally, if one doesn’t want to change their habits (drive less, conserve energy, etc.), it’s psychologically easier to latch onto a theory that such change isn’t necessary because the premise of danger (finite oil or warming planet) is false. In the U.S., climate denial has often wrapped itself in a flag of patriotism and personal freedom – “they can’t take away my God-given V8 engine!” Abiotic oil feeds into a sort of cornucopian fantasy that technology or nature will provide limitless energy, so we need not worry about sustainability.
Distrust of Perceived “Elites”: A hallmark of conspiracy thinking is distrust of experts. Surveys have found that climate change conspiracy believers tend to be people who distrust scientists and also often embrace populist, anti-elite attitudes. They lump climate scientists, geologists, and sometimes even petroleum engineers into a bucket of “elitists” who are supposedly hiding truths. The irony is thick: oil geologists are hardly a left-wing bunch – they literally help oil companies find oil – yet because they agree oil comes from fossils and that oil will eventually run low (and many accept climate science too), the conspiracy crowd labels them part of the grand deception. According to data, the “typical climate change conspiracy believer” skews young, right-wing, distrustful of scientific authorities, and drawn to populist rhetoric about corrupt elites. So when someone like that hears a theory that flips the script – saying it’s the scientists and environmentalists who are lying, and the oil industry (or a few renegade truth-tellers) who have the real story – it resonates strongly.
Thus, fear of climate change isn’t so much fear of the phenomenon (some actually scoff that “even if it’s happening, a warmer Earth might be nice!”) but fear of the consequences of accepting it. Consequences in terms of economic changes, perceived loss of freedom, or admitting that unbridled fossil fuel use has downsides. It’s a defensive maneuver: reject the scientific evidence so you don’t have to deal with the scary policy or lifestyle implications. And in that defensive playbook, abiotic oil is a useful tool – a reassuring tale that nature has our back and that those pesky climate scientists are just Chicken Littles.
There’s also a thread of anti-environmentalism for its own sake. Some folks just don’t like environmentalists – seeing them as hippies or “radical conservationists” who want to impede progress. Corsi’s book, for example, portrays environmentalists as having a political agenda to obstruct oil usage. Embracing abiotic oil is a way to thumb one’s nose at the environmental movement: “See, the real science says oil is infinite, climate change is fake, let’s drill, baby, drill!” It’s almost joyous contrarianism – a way to oppose the “mainstream narrative” and align with a tribe that fancies itself bravely truth-telling against political correctness.
However, just because a theory feels good or aligns with one’s ideology doesn’t make it true. Reality is famously indifferent to our wishes. You can refuse to believe in gravity, but you’ll still fall off a cliff. Likewise, denying that oil is finite or that climate change is real doesn’t stop wells from drying up or storms from intensifying. This is where the importance of evidence comes back in, like a sober friend crashing the conspiracy party.
The Cost of Rejecting Reality
At the end of the day, whether oil is abiotic or not isn’t just an academic squabble. It has real implications for how we plan our energy future and respond to environmental challenges. And more broadly, the abiotic oil belief is a case study in what happens when people reject evidence and consensus science: it can lead us down dangerous roads of misinformation and inaction.
Let’s consider what’s at stake. If policymakers were to believe the abiotic theorists, they might conclude that oil will never run out. That could encourage continued heavy reliance on petroleum, less investment in renewables, and a rude awakening when – surprise! – those deep wells still do deplete because they were never refilling magically after all. (In fact, globally we’ve seen conventional oil production plateau in many regions; new oil comes mostly from unconventional sources like shales, which still originate from organics, just in more dispersed form.) The notion of endless oil is a seductive mirage that could lead to energy policy failure if taken seriously. It’s no coincidence that abiotic oil theory saw a mini-resurgence in the 2000s when concerns about “peak oil” (the tipping point of maximum global oil output) were high; it was basically a comfort blanket, telling people not to worry about overusing a finite resource. But denial doesn’t stop reality – if we had collectively banked on abiotic replenishment, the economic shocks from supply crunches could have been even worse.
Even more critically, the entwining of abiotic oil belief with climate change denial has stark societal consequences. Climate change is arguably the greatest challenge of our time, and we are already witnessing its effects: extreme weather, wildfires, sea-level rise. Broad scientific consensus (something like 97% of climate scientists) agrees that burning fossil fuels is the primary driver. To mitigate the worst outcomes, we need to transition away from those fuels. Now imagine a segment of society dug into the position that this is all a grand hoax – they will resist any effort to reduce fossil fuel use. In the U.S. and some other countries, we’ve seen this play out: opposition to climate action often stems from people who simply don’t accept the evidence of the problem. When nearly 15% of Americans flat-out deny that climate change is real, it creates a huge hurdle for democratic consensus on solutions. The abiotic oil myth feeds into that denial, giving it a pseudo-scientific sheen (“see, even oil’s origin is controversial!”) and reinforcing the idea that scientists are untrustworthy.
Rejecting scientific evidence in favor of conspiracy thinking erodes the very concept of objective truth. If we all get to have our “own facts,” productive discourse becomes impossible. As the COVID-19 pandemic painfully illustrated, mass denial of scientific reality can cost lives. During the pandemic, large swaths of people ignored medical experts and refused proven measures, leading to preventable deaths – a stark “high-stakes consequence of science denialism” that Americans witnessed first-hand. While the topic is different, the pattern is the same with climate and energy: ignoring the evidence (whether it’s virus transmission or CO2 trapping heat) doesn’t make the problem disappear – it makes the problem worse while we dither.
Society pays a price for widespread misinformation. In the case of climate change, the longer we entertain false debates (“Is it really happening? Is oil maybe infinite?”), the more time we lose in addressing the issue. In the case of energy resources, if we don’t plan for eventual declines or transitions because we’re clinging to myths of limitless supply, we risk economic and security crises. And beyond any single issue, there’s a civic cost: the polarization and breakdown of trust that comes when a group of people is convinced that mainstream science is a malicious conspiracy. How do you have constructive policy discussions when one side’s starting point is “everything you claim is a lie”? It’s incredibly difficult. It leads to gridlock and a discourse dominated by accusations rather than problem-solving.
This is why evidence-based thinking is so important to maintain. Evidence is the great equalizer – it doesn’t care about our politics or preferences. Proper scientific process is designed to root out personal biases: experiments, peer review, reproducibility. No individual scientist is saintly or infallible, but the collective process of science is self-correcting and converges on truth over time. The abiotic oil hypothesis was given a fair shake in that arena – scientists tested it (e.g. Gold’s experiment, geochemical analyses, etc.) and the results consistently came back favoring the biotic theory. That doesn’t mean scientists are close-minded; it means the hypothesis just didn’t pan out. Clinging to it in spite of the refuting evidence is what turns it from a hypothesis into a belief or dogma. At that point it’s left the scientific method behind and become, essentially, a pseudoscientific conspiracy theory.
From an “objective perspective,” the evidence defines reality. We have to be willing to accept what evidence shows, even if it’s inconvenient or disappointing. For example, I might want to believe that eating five donuts a day is healthy – perhaps I find a fringe doctor who supports my magical donut diet – but 99 other doctors and a pile of nutrition research say otherwise. If I choose to believe the one outlier because it tells me what I want to hear, I do so at my own peril (and waistline). On a societal level, large-scale rejection of evidence – whether on public health, climate, or energy – puts us all in peril. It’s not just “those people over there” who suffer; reality has a way of catching up to everyone.
Myths and Moving Forward
Refuting the abiotic oil theory isn’t just about settling an argument in geology. It’s part of a larger effort to combat misinformation, promote scientific literacy, and keep our collective decision-making tethered to reality. So how do we do that, especially in an age where conspiracy theories can spread faster than a grease fire?
First, education and communication are key. We need science communicators and educators who can explain concepts like oil formation or climate change in clear, relatable terms – and do it with patience and even a little humor. One reason wild theories gain traction is that experts sometimes talk past the general public, using jargon or seeming elitist. By adopting a more accessible tone (without dumbing down the facts), science advocates can preempt some misinformation. It’s a bit like what we’ve done here: walking through the logic and evidence in a conversational way, acknowledging why the wrong idea might be appealing, but gently dismantling it. Engaging people’s curiosity works better than scorning them. As Naomi Oreskes (a historian of science) points out, simply throwing more data at deniers often doesn’t work if the denial is rooted in identity or values. We should address the values and fears underlying the false beliefs. For instance, show that accepting climate science doesn’t mean abandoning all economic growth or that transitioning energy can be an opportunity, not just a sacrifice.
Second, it’s important to call out conspiratorial thinking patterns without outright mocking the individuals. We can illustrate how unlikely massive conspiracies are (“If geologists were hiding a secret, how come thousands of them from dozens of countries all keep quiet? They can’t all be in on it.”). We can also emphasize the track record of science: how evidence-based understanding has given us modern medicine, satellites, and smartphones – it works. A dose of historical perspective helps too: remind folks of past instances where denying science led to trouble (like societies that ignored sanitation and suffered plagues, or leaders who dismissed engineers’ warnings until bridges collapsed). These analogies can gently remind us that we ignore reality at our own risk.
Third, platforms and media that propagate misinformation need to be engaged. This doesn’t mean censorship so much as presence: if YouTube and Facebook are rife with “abiotic oil” videos, then we need quality content and fact-checks on those same platforms. People often fall down rabbit holes because the algorithm never showed them the rebuttal. By ensuring that searches for “abiotic oil” turn up science-based explanations (which is partly why articles like this need to exist!), we can intercept the curiosity before it curdles into conspiracy belief.
On the climate front, it might help to frame solutions in a positive, inclusive way rather than just doom and gloom. Some climate skeptics might come around if the message is not “sacrifice and regulation” but “innovation and opportunity” – for example, highlighting jobs in renewable energy, energy independence, or the cool technological strides in electric vehicles. If part of their resistance is ideological (e.g. dislike of government mandates), then show how market-driven solutions or private sector leadership can also tackle climate issues. Essentially, find common ground. As Oreskes suggests, engaging people’s values is crucial: if someone values economic growth, show them how unchecked climate change threatens the economy; if they cherish their family’s future, discuss climate in terms of protecting our children’s world. This can slowly chip away at the mental walls that conspiracies build.
Finally, we should foster a cultural norm that changing one’s mind in light of evidence is a strength, not a weakness. In conspiracy communities, there’s often a siege mentality – an “us vs. them” pride in resisting the mainstream. To counter that, we can celebrate examples where people publicly moved from misinformation to understanding, to show it’s admirable to follow facts even when they overturn your prior beliefs. It’s like praising a former flat-Earther who went “You know, I finally saw the curvature from an airplane and did some homework – my bad, Earth is round after all.” These narratives can be powerful in encouraging others to question their rabbit-hole assumptions without feeling humiliated.
In the end, maintaining rational discourse in the public sphere is a bit like tending a garden. Misinformation are the weeds that will always sprout – some benign, some invasive. We can’t eradicate them completely, but we can keep them in check by sowing good seeds of knowledge, pulling out falsehoods by their roots with sound explanations, and patiently watering the soil of public understanding. The abiotic oil theory, as tantalizing as it sounds, wilts under the sunlight of evidence. By understanding why some cling to it, we don’t just debunk a fringe idea – we also illuminate the broader forces that challenge scientific truth in our society. And by addressing those, we stand a better chance of steering our collective future with wisdom instead of wishful thinking.