Should Academics Debunk Conspiracy Theories?

ABSTRACT

This article addresses the question, ‘Should scholars debunk conspiracy theories or stay neutral?’ It describes ‘conspiracy theories’ and two senses of ‘neutrality,’ arguing that scholars should be neutral in the sense of being fair and openminded. While that does not exclude the possibility of debunking, it does mean that the motive should be to assess rather than to debunk. This article also responds to a particular group of social scientists who have argued that conspiracy theories are ‘unhealthy,’ and suggests that their perspective may be reasonably representative of social scientists working on conspiracy theories. Maintaining that the arguments given for pathologizing conspiracy theorists are poor ones, it suggests that social scientists have not shown a tendency to treat conspiracy theories reasonably or fairly, and further suggests that they are therefore unlikely to be helpful in assessing conspiracy theories unless they reform their attitude. Greater appreciation for the philosophical literature on this issue may help social scientists come to appreciate that conspiracy theories ought to be evaluated on their particular merits, not pathologized and dismissed as generally unhealthy.

KEYWORDS:

• Conspiracy theories
• social sciences
• philosophy
• debunking
• pathologizing
• neutrality

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Brian Martin, Lee Basham, Elzbieta Drazkiewicz, Jaron Harambam, and three anonymous reviewers for their helpful suggestions and comments on earlier drafts.

Disclosure Statement

I have one published booklet, and a book manuscript currently under review, on the philosophy of conspiracy theories, for which I may receive royalties.

Notes

1. Wagner-Egger et al. write, ‘For the “unhealthy” view, conspiracy theories are mainly false, often delusional, having negative social consequences, and favored by faulty reasoning (cognitive biases)’ (2019, 50). They also refer to this as the ‘pathologizing’ view, and at the end of their paper they rename it the ‘(ir)rational view’ (58).

2. See ‘What is a Conspiracy Theory’ in Hagen, manuscript.

3. This is the way the question was framed in a recent call for papers for a conference held at Maynooth University, in Dublin, Ireland, in June 2019. The conference theme was: ‘Does truth matter? The role of social sciences in debunking conspiracy theories.’

4. Even critics of conspiracy theories admit this. For example, Cass Sunstein and Adrian Vermeule write: ‘Of course some conspiracy theories have turned out to be true, and under our definition, they do not cease to be conspiracy theories for that reason. The Watergate hotel room used by [the] Democratic National Committee was, in fact, bugged by Republican officials, operating at the behest of the White House. In the 1950s, the Central Intelligence Agency did, in fact, administer LSD and related drugs under Project MKULTRA, in an effort to investigate the possibility of “mind control.” Operation Northwoods, a rumored plan by the Department of Defense to simulate acts of terrorism and to blame them on Cuba, really was proposed by high-level officials (though the plan never went into effect)’ (Sunstein and Vermeule 2009, 206).

5. According to the analysis of Charles Lewis: ‘[I]n the two years after the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, President George W. Bush and seven of his administration’s top officials made at least 935 false statements about the national security threat posed by Iraq. The carefully orchestrated campaign of untruths about Iraq’s alleged threat to US national security from its WMDs or links to al Qaeda (also specious) galvanized public opinion and led the nation to war under decidedly false pretenses’ (Lewis 2014, xiii).

6. ‘Oral Answers to Questions,’ UK Parliament, Publications & Records, Vol. 397, Part 329, 15 January 2003: Column 675. https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200203/cmhansrd/vo030115/debtext/30115-03.htm (accessed 12-7-19).

7. Examples include: Keeley (1999), Clarke (2002), Levy (2007), Mandik (2007), Sunstein and Vermeule (2009), and Cassam (2016).

8. See Coady (2003), (Coady 2007), (Coady 2012), (Coady 2018b), (Coady 2018a); Pigden (1995), (Pigden 2007), (Pigden 2017); Hagen (2010), (Hagen 2011), (Hagen 2018a), (Hagen 2018b); Buenting and Taylor (2010); and Basham and Dentith (2015). For a summary of much of this literature see ‘The Philosophers of Conspiracy Theory’ in Hagen, manuscript.

9. See, for example, the first several chapters of Dentith (2018a). See also Buenting and Taylor (2010).

10. This precise language comes from the aforementioned call for papers for the conference at Maynooth University. But the general idea that distrust of official accounts needs explaining often seems tacitly assumed in the work of social scientists who study conspiracy theories. And it is often suggested that a distrusting attitude may explain conspiracy theorists’ beliefs without considering that, conversely, reasonable assessment of certain realities might explain the distrusting attitude.

11. For more on the relationship between conspiracy theories and official accounts, see Coady (2007), especially 198–200, and Coady (2018a), 176–177, 183–185, as well as Coady (2003).

12. ‘Were Sunstein and Vermeule Misunderstood? An Examination of Sunstein’s Revision’ in Hagen, manuscript.

13. In addition to Buenting and Taylor, particularism is supported, at least implicitly, by philosophers M Dentith, Lee Basham, David Coady, Charles Pigden, Juha Räikkä, and ultimately by Brian Keeley.

14. There are some subsets of conspiracy theories that can reasonably be dismissed on generalist grounds, such as those with significant internal contradictions. By ‘controversial’ conspiracy theories I mean to include conspiracy theories that many serious people take seriously, and to exclude patently illogical conspiracy theories, as well as ‘fantastical’ conspiracy theories such as those positing shapeshifting lizard people. Cf. Räikkä and Basham (2019), 180.

15. M Dentith comments, ‘I am quite aware that generalism still is the dominant force in the academic sphere, with only faint lip service paid to particularism when people say “Well, of course that conspiracy theory turned out to be true, but … ”’ (Dentith 2018b, 65).

16. For further discussion on the uncovering of genuine conspiracies, in response to a similar argument by a different group of scholars, see ‘Conspiracy Ideation and the Revelation of Real Conspiracies,’ in Hagen, manuscript.

17. Errant data is data that is unaccounted for by, or conflicts with, a particular account. In most contexts it refers to data that seems in this way to problematize an official account.

18. The official account of 9/11 posits Osama bin Laden and his band of ‘evildoers’ plotting a rather heinous crime. And the official account of the assassination of Martin Luther King attributes the motive of racial animus to James Earl Ray. On the other hand, some conspiracy theorists maintain that those they believe to be behind the assassination of President Kennedy did it for essentially patriotic reasons: Kennedy was a traitor selling out America to the communists. In addition, while some conspiracy theorists do think that ‘chemtrails’ are being spayed for nefarious reasons, others think they are part of a secret, and desperate, plot to combat climate change. Finally, for a number of conspiracy theories the issue of malice doesn’t really arise: Elvis is alive, Paul is dead, the moon landing was faked. (See Hagen 2018b for an extended analysis.)

19. Appeal to Occam’s razor in the context of evaluating conspiracy theories is addressed in more detail in the ‘Introduction’ of Hagen, manuscript.

20. E. Howard Hunt admitted to being on the periphery of the assassination conspiracy, though he claimed to have ultimately played the role of mere ‘bench warmer.’ And David Morales is credibly reported as having implied his own involvement and/or that of the CIA. See https://www.maryferrell.org/pages/Confessions.html and the link to ‘David Morales – We Took Care of That SOB’ (accessed 6/12/19).

21. See Basham (2018) for an analysis of ‘toxic truths’ as a critique of the ‘public trust approach.’ The latter suggests that, in Western democracies, the mainstream media and law enforcement agencies will reliably uncover conspiracies that subvert democracy. Basham argues that, on the contrary, past an inflection point in toxicity, the more momentous a conspiracy, the more likely it will be covered up, and that said cover-up will not itself require conspiratorial activity. If a truth is sufficiently toxic, writes Basham, ‘Cover-up by intentional neglect, not descending control, is the easily predictable consequence’ (2018, 271).

22. For a critical view of the civil case, see Serena (2017).

23. Phillips was a CIA agent who is suspected by some conspiracy theorists of involvement in the JFK assassination. He was long dead by the time Veciana claimed that he was Bishop, but while alive he had denied this and that he had met Oswald. However, he sort of incriminated himself in other ways. For example, on his deathbed, he reportedly admitted to his brother that he had been in Dallas the day Kennedy was killed. See Someone Would Have Talked (Hancock 2006) for various people who ‘talked’ about the JFK assassination, and for Phillips in particular see 113–115, 179–183.

24. I have challenged both the quality and fairness of the psychological work on conspiracy theories in more detail elsewhere (Hagen 2018a, 2018b), though I have not addressed nearly all the articles cited by Wagner-Egger et al.

25. The purported ‘monological’ nature of conspiracy theories is now questioned even by former supporters of the view. Robbie Sutton and Karen Douglas, no friends of conspiracy theorists, conclude: ‘[W]e think it is premature, and unfairly pejorative, to portray conspiracy beliefs as a manifestation of monological thinking. … It is sobering to reflect that scales measuring agreement with conspiracy theories also, by definition, measure disagreement with them. So we might equally say that correlations between conspiracy items show that rejection of conspiracy theories comprises part of a monological worldview, in which alternatives to official accounts are dismissed in a closed-minded and irrational fashion!’ (Sutton and Douglas (2014), 268, emphasis added).

26. The experiment referred to is Wood (2016), see 698.

27. Moore distinguishes himself by recognizing and noting, if rather too politely, that the ‘supposed contradiction’ has not actually been established (2019, 112–113).

28. For a detailed discussion of the problem with Wood, Douglas, and Sutton (2012), see Hagen (2018a), 305–310.

29. Regarding the work of most of the philosophers mentioned, I summarize and extend existing critiques, especially those by David Coady and Charles Pigden, in ‘The Philosophers of Conspiracy Theory’ in Hagen, manuscript. The exceptions are Lloyd and Brophy, who are covered in the following chapter along with their co-author Lewandowski. The social scientists (except Lewandowski) are covered in two other chapters, which are revised versions of Hagen (2018a) and (Hagen 2018b).

30. The arguments presented by Sunstein and Vermeule are critiqued in three chapters of Hagen, manuscript. (Earlier versions of two of those chapters are Hagen (2010) and (Hagen 2011).) See also Coady (2018b), Pigden (2017), and Griffin (2011).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Kurtis Hagen

Kurtis Hagen is an independent scholar. He was an associate professor and Chair of the Philosophy Department at SUNY Plattsburgh. His publications on the philosophy of conspiracy theories include: Conspiracy Theory: A Philosophical Defense (2018), ‘Conspiracy Theories and the Paranoid Style: Do Conspiracy Theories Posit Implausibly Vast and Evil Conspiracies?’ (2018), ‘Conspiracy Theories and Monological Belief Systems’ (2018), ‘Conspiracy Theorists and Social Scientists’ (2018), ‘Conspiracy Theories and Stylized Facts’ (2011), and ‘Is Infiltration of “Extremist Groups” Justified?’ (2010). Other publications include Philosophers of the Warring States: A Sourcebook in Chinese Philosophy (with Steve Coutinho, 2018). ‘Would Early Confucians Really Support Humanitarian Interventions?’ (2016), and The Philosophy of Xunzi: A Reconstruction (2007).