Category: Conspiracies
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My public radio appearance on conspiracy theories
I’m going for shameless self promotion today, sorry. Listen to my appearance on “Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow” discussing conspiracy theories. I almost never respond to press inquiries since I don’t think I’m qualified to talk about many things as an expert, but wacky internet conspiracy theories? I’m your man.
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Holy cow, yet another conspiracy theory!
This has been a year of some wonderfully crazy new conspiracies. Birtherism is actually looking pretty banal next to the “Obama is gay-married to a Pakistani” conspiracy, the “Obama is a Jihadist sleeper agent conspiracy, the Aurora conspiracies, job numbers conspiracies, polling conspiracy theories from America’s least-accurate pollster Dick Morris, and, my former favorite, the…
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Monckton goes birther – demonstrates crank magnetism
Via Ed I see that Christopher Monckton is expanding his crankery from denying global warming, claiming to be and MP despite cease and desist letters from parliament asking him to stop, curing HIV, the flu, MS and the common cold to now engaging in Birtherism. It’s pathetic when you’ve been pre-debunked by snopes, but there’s…
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Conspiracy-targeted Campaigning from Romney
Slate has an interesting article about Romney campaign mailings that appear to contain buzzwords for chronic Lyme disease advocates in Virginia. Romney’s plan for Lyme disease includes these two points: IMPROVE SYNERGY Ensure that government agencies have an open line of communication and work with patients, researchers, doctors, and businesses in an objective, comprehensive manner.…
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Disinformation about Disinformation: L. Gordon Crovitz's Information Age
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When one spouts disinformation about disinformation, does it make it information? No, it’s L. Gordon Crovitz’s “Information Age,” the weekly poorly informed and poorly reasoned blather about information policy in the Wall Street Journal. Recall that Crovitz recently wrote about the invention of the Internet and online privacy. I wrote about these last two columns,…
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Louis Gordon Crovitz’s Disinformation Age
Imagine a newspaper oped with half a dozen fallacies. Such a thing could appear in any newspaper in the US. But now imagine that the author is a Rhodes Scholar and you’re left with the Wall Street Journal’s L. Gordon Crovitz. For years I’ve followed the bizarre arguments of L. Gordon Crovitz, who has a…
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Environmentalism and anti-science, how GMOs prove any ideological extremity leads to anti-science
Today I read about two individuals who decided on political defections over perceived anti-science amongst their former political allies- one due to climate change, the other for anti-GMO. From the right, we have Michael Fumento, who in Salon describes his break with the right, spurred by Heartland’s campaign comparing those who believe in climate change…
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We need a new denialism category for Obama conspiracies
Right Wing Watch is a great site to follow to track the latest conspiratorial craziness coming from the right. It seems every single day there is some new bizarre claim about homosexuals trying to enslave America and institute sharia law (that makes sense right?), or how Obama is a muslim, yada yada. But today I…
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The Great UN Conspiracy to (gasp) increase green space!
You heard me. There is a shocking conspiracy, directly from the nefarious leaders of the one world government at the UN and their pawn, Barack Obama to add more public transportation and green space to your neighborhood. Across the country, activists with ties to the Tea Party are railing against all sorts of local and…
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The psychology of crankery
Our recent discussions of HIV/AIDS denial and in particular Seth Kalichman’s book “Denying AIDS” has got me thinking more about the psychology of those who are susceptible to pseudoscientific belief. It’s an interesting topic, and Kalichman studies it briefly in his book mentioning the “suspicious minds”: At its very core, denialism is deeply embedded in…