There has been a wild conspiracy theory going around that the San Francisco 49ers have suffered more injuries because of a electrical substation near the team’s practice facility in Santa Clara.
The idea is that the high number of injuries sustained by 49ers players is somehow caused by electromagnetic fields produced by Silicon Valley Power’s Mission Substation, which is located next to the team’s practice facility. The substation even has its own X account.
John Lynch, general manager of the 49ers, stated that the team engaged an independent scientist with decades of expertise in analyzing electromagnetic fields to examine the facility because the belief in the conspiracy theory was so pervasive. Lynch later called the entire situation a “big nothing burger,” claiming the facility was safe based on the measurements. The team never provided any actual proof or data to back up that claim, say the skeptics.
Naturally, since the San Francisco 49ers have suffered more injuries during training camp, the electrical substation conspiracy theory is gaining traction again.
What does the science say about the 49ers electrical substation injury theory? It depends on who you ask
So, Pablo Torre decided to have someone do a test that he could make completely public. On Thursday, he released the episode titled, “Is the Electrical Substation Near the 49ers’ Facility Injuring Players? We Investigated.”
In the video, Torre teamed up with Wendy Zuckerman of the “Science Vs” podcast to “map the actual electric waves, explain the cancer research and pore over the football data.” What they determined can be summed up in one paragraph.
“The truth is, sometimes s— just happens and injuries just happen. And you look at the stats, 32 teams, 16 of them are going to be at the bottom half. That’s just stats, right?!” said Zuckerman, adding, “I think the deep story there is that the 49ers are plagued year after year with crazy amounts of injuries, when really, when you look at the stats, they’re not doing great, but they’re not doing crazy bad, crazy enough that we need to reach to substations to explain what’s going on. The bottom line, we can safely say, the substation, the evidence just isn’t there that it is to blame for the injuries the 49ers have had.”
Of course, because the internet’s gonna internet and conspiracy theorists are gonna conspire, it took like a nanosecond (actually, it happened before Torre’s video even was published) for someone to cast doubt on Pablo Torre’s research and kick the 49ers substation injury theory back into gear.