it was started by a guy on his blog with an explicit statement at the start that it wasn’t true and his intent was to demonstrate how easy it was to create a conspiracy theory…

This reminds me of the guy who faked a study that supposedly claimed chocolate could help to lose weight, he put a lot of red flags in it, and it was still not only turned into headlines of numerous magazines, but was actually even published in a scientific journal that claims it does extensive peer review.

Unfortunately, this study is still referred to as of today. People still find claims that chocolate with high cocoa content can work as a weight-loss accelerator.