On the Viability of Conspiratorial Beliefs
0.1 Anti-Science conspiracy narratives—A brief overview
Conspiracy theories which posit some nefarious underhanded action by scientists are ubiquitous. In these work, we shall restrict our focus to four prominent beliefs of this genre. These are listed below.
NASA Moon-landing conspiracy—The successful 1969 Apollo 11 mission first put men on the moon, a seminal achievement in human history. Yet even since that historic day, there has been a persistent fringe belief group that strongly believe the moon-landings were faked, mocked up for propaganda purposes. In 2013 it was estimated that 7% of Americans subscribe to this view [15]. Those advocating this conspiracy claim there are inconsistencies in pictures taken on the moon’s surface, despite these claims being comprehensively debunked [16].
Climate change conspiracy—Climate-change denial has a deep political dimension [7, 8]. Despite the overwhelming strength of evidence supporting the scientific consensus of anthropogenic global warming [17], there are many who reject this consensus. Of these, many claim that climate-change is a hoax staged by scientists and environmentalists [18–20], ostensibly to yield research income. Such beliefs are utterly negated by the sheer wealth of evidence against such a proposition, but remain popular due to an often-skewed false balance present in partisan media [20, 21], resulting in public confusion and inertia.
Vaccination conspiracy—Conspiratorial beliefs about vaccination are endemic in the anti-vaccination movement [18, 22]. It is estimated that roughly 20% of Americans hold the long de-bunked notion that there is a link between autism and the MMR vaccine [15], a belief which has reduced uptake of important vaccinations [22] in several countries. Anti-vaccination beliefs and scare-mongering are also endemic in the internet age, with vaccine critical websites asserting dubious information [23, 24]. Ill-founded beliefs over vaccination have been darkly successful in stirring panic and reducing vaccine uptake, which has led to damaging resurgence in diseases such as measles [4].
Cancer cure conspiracy—The belief that a cure for cancer is being withheld by vested interests is a long-standing one [25]. It is often used as a universal deus ex machina for those pushing an alternative alleged cure, and assertion of the conspiracy theory functions as an explanatory device to explain the complete paucity of clinical evidence for such claims [26]. Such claims can be detrimental to patients, some of whom abandon conventional treatment for the lofty but ill-founded promises of alternative medicine [27].