The paranoid individual, as novelist William S Burroughs once remarked, is simply someone in full possession of the facts. Or to put it another way: the simplest explanation may well be the most correct interpretation of events but it’s also the least interesting. Human imagination requires more. Thanks to conspiracy theory we can have a social history that takes into account our innermost fears and desires.

Want to see how closely linked and interconnected things really are? Just read up on a few conspiracies. Sure you’ll read some truly weird and wild stuff, which may or may not be true, but you’ll never be able to read your daily newspaper in quite the same way again. Conspiracies not only rule the world, they make it a far more fascinating place as well.

‘You have to respect the feelings behind this kind of thing,’ remarked political philosopher Noam Chomsky on those individuals keen to uncover the secret connections between UFO sightings and US government policy. ‘The feelings are quite genuine, but because there is no constructive way to react, and people’s minds have been turned to mush by decades of propaganda and crazy entertainment, this is what happens.’

So does that mean Nasa hasn’t been conspiring to cover up evidence of life on Mars for all these years? Gee, maybe the infamous ‘Great Face of Mars’ really is just a weird rock formation, after all. But who ultimately is the loser if that turns out to be true? As ace aerospace designer Burt Rutan commented in a recent interview, if Nasa had said there really was a face on the Red Planet and not just a pile of rocks, their Mars exploration programme would have received full funding by now. Which not only makes a lot of sense, if you think about it, it also just to goes to show that conspiracy really does rule the world.