This drives me nuts.
When I was in grad school, we had our weekly seminar. A student in our group had to go give a review-presentation on a topic of their choosing each week for our brown bag lunch meetings. People would usually present on topics related or adjacent to their actual work, because doing the reading and research for their presentation was part of their larger knowledge gain and broadening related to their own field.
But this one guy presented about how the world was going to end in 2012. He was serious -- some how he had made it into grad school, fooling everyone. We all thought it was some sort of Andy Kaufmann-esque prank he was playing on it, holding a straight face while presenting -- complete with references to conspiracy websites.
He lost his funding shortly thereafter.
The weird thing is, losing his funding probably reinforced his belief in the conspiracy. Persecution complexes can be very powerful things.
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