Prince Phillip runs the world drug trade, the 9/11 attacks in the US were an “inside job” of the Bush administration, and US President Barak Obama’s Hawaiian birth certificate is a forgery. Oh, and climate change is a hoax perpetrated by corrupt scientists who just want more government grant money.
Conspiracy theories are part and parcel of contemporary public discourse, and some people clearly find their allure irresistible. Surveys show that 10% of Americans believe that US agencies intentionally created the AIDS epidemic and 15% believe that the evidence for a link between second-hand cigarette smoke and ill-health has been invented by a corrupt cartel of medical researchers. Our research has shown that around 20% of Americans – one in five – believe that evidence for climate change has been produced by corrupt scientists looking for more taxpayer money.
It may be tempting to dismiss conspiracy theories as obsessions of a few dysfunctional or maladapted individuals. However, such dismissal is inadvisable in light of the fact that nearly half of all New Yorkers in 2004 believed that the US government had advance knowledge of the 9/11 attacks and consciously failed to act. Among African-Americans, nearly half of respondents believed in the early 2000s that people who take medicines for HIV are guinea pigs for the government.
These observations can...
