This Equation Proves You're Doing it Wrong

A professor in physics from the University of Oxford, Dr. Robert Grimes, claimed earlier this year that massive conspiracies are impossible and he can prove it. Via an equation that he created.
 
As reported in Science Daily, Large-scale conspiracies would quickly reveal themselves, equations show:

Dr Grimes initially created an equation to express the probability of a conspiracy being either deliberately uncovered by a whistle-blower or inadvertently revealed by a bungler. This factors in the number of conspirators, the length of time, and even the effects of conspirators dying, whether of old age or more nefarious means, for those conspiracies that do not require active maintenance.

Based on these factors, he reviewed a few popular ‘conspiracies.’ For example, for the moon hoax theory, he ‘estimated’ that 411,000 people would have to be in the know for any hoax. If ‘climate change’ is a fraud, that would require 405,000 people to be in on it, according to Dr. Grimes. Where these numbers come from or how he estimates this is not known.
 
Then he fills in these numbers into his equation and determines that, on average, the moon hoax would have been discovered in less than four years.
 
I hope Dr. Grimes isn’t applying his intelligence to anything important.
 
Obviously, his equation consists of numbers he is pulling from thin air. He provides no rational justification for the number of people involved in the conspiracy, he doesn’t define what constitutes a conspiracy (rather than a difference of opinion, as in climate change), and he doesn’t explain what is meant by ‘discovery.’ Sometimes conspiracies are ‘discovered’ incorrectly.
 
Discovered incorrectly? This is what I mean. If you ask the average person what happened in the Watergate burglary – assuming they’ve heard of it – they will likely give you some version of the Woodward-Bernstein All the President’s Men version. Unfortunately, that is fairy tale, as has been written about at length by other authors, in books like Secret Agenda by Jim Hougan, Silent Coup by Len Colodny, and White House Call Girl by Phil Stanford. Frankly, if you want to spend a worthwhile afternoon, read the transcripts of the Nixon tapes. It will make you reevaluate John Dean and a lot of other things besides.
 
The House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA), the last official investigation into the Kennedy assassination, came to the conclusion that it was a conspiracy. The media, by and large, pretends this never happened and goes back to the Warren Commission at every opportunity. So is that conspiracy discovered? You tell me.
 
Finally, as Dr. Grimes should know, being that he is from Oxford, he has a counterexample staring him right in the face. His own government kept Enigma secret for forty years, as I wrote about in my review of The Imitation Game. And that was a relatively benign conspiracy. Imagine if it wasn’t.
 
In our own country, I would like to do more investigation into MK-ULTRA, but that is prevented by Richard Helms, who ordered most of the relevant documents destroyed in 1973.
 
I fear Dr. Grimes fits the cliché of the physics professor who thinks that his wrongheaded math produces insights into the real world. It doesn't. And when it comes to conspiracies, he is out of his depth.