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Academic Conference on Conspiracy Theories at the University of Miami (6 posts)

1. truthmod
   Administrator

   From what I understand, this is a burgeoning area of serious academic study. A lot of it seems aimed at psychoanalyzing conspiracy theorists. There are people who are arguing some good points though too.

   http://www.as.miami.edu/politicalscience/events/co...

   http://reason.com/blog/2015/03/18/what-i-saw-at-th...

   ---

   A sign greets the scholars on the opening evening."I get the feeling that a lot of philosophers can poke a hole in anything," Ted Goertzel complained, his voice radiating prickly impatience. The site was the University of Miami, where nearly 50 scholars from institutions across Europe and America had gathered to discuss conspiracy theories in a room named for Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson. Goertzel, a retired Rutgers sociologist, was addressing a panel of philosophers who had indeed just spent an hour poking holes in popular notions about conspiratorial beliefs. One had presented a paper with the cheeky title "Why Do We Believe Conspiracy Theories Exist?"

   Goertzel wasn't buying it. "I think the reason we think conspiracy theories exist is because they exist," he declared.

   It was neither the first nor the last contentious moment of the conference, which took place on the university's Coral Gables campus from March 12 to 14. The event had been organized by Joseph Uscinski and Joseph Parent, a pair of political scientists who did a commendable job of looking past their own field to invite people from different disciplines. And when I say "different disciplines," I don't merely mean "people who study different things." I mean "people with entirely different tool kits for understanding the universe."

   The result was a friendly but frequently combative gathering of tribes, each of which had to suss out the other gangs' languages and worldviews. Here's a rundown of the rival clans:

   The social psychologists. For this group, the study of conspiracy theories is mostly a matter of conducting experiments. The psychologists have developed several questionnaires that are supposed to show how prone a subject is to different sorts of thinking, including conspiracism. In a typical study, volunteers might answer those questions, read an article (or be "exposed to" the article, as the experimenters like to put it), and then give their responses to the story. Then the researchers start looking for correlations.

   Posted 9 years ago #
2. truthmod
   Administrator

   Interesting tidbit from the Reason article:

   While political scientists aren't averse to psych-style lab experiments, they often cast a much larger net for their numbers, drawing on opinion surveys and similar sources. Uscinski and Parent excavated a particularly big pile of data in their 2014 book American Conspiracy Theories. They and their research assistants conducted an intensive study of more than 100,000 letters to the editor in The New York Times and The Chicago Tribune from 1890 to 2010, counting and classifying every conspiratorial claim they found. It is the most ambitious effort I've seen to determine when conspiracy thinking has gotten more or less common in the U.S., and the results cut against the conventional wisdom. The duo found two major spikes in conspiracy-themed letters: one in the 1890s, when public attention turned to corporate trusts, and one in the 1950s, when Cold War tensions were high. They spotted some smaller swells as well, responding to events such as Watergate. But in general, they think American paranoia has been fairly stable over time, showing if anything a gradual decline.

   Posted 9 years ago #
3. BrianG
   Member

   Oh but that's just what they want you to think! ;>)

   Lance deHaven Smith's work is worth reading.

   I'm not much interested in the mechanisms of conspiracism any more. What intrigues me far more is the mindset of the "debunkers". What inspires them to invest such enormous energies in their crusade against people they regard as the dumbest on the planet? Some have such compulsive stamina and are so repetitive and inflexible that you have to suspect that they're artificially (and not very) intelligent machines.

   It seems that there's a great rise in knee-jerk conspiracy-phobia. It's irrational and extremely emotional nature is fascinating.

   Posted 9 years ago #
4. truthmod
   Administrator

   James Tracy wrote an article about his experience at this conference. He became notable a while back for his doubts about the Newtown / Sandy Hook massacre.

   Among the “Conspiracy Theory” Theorists

   http://www.globalresearch.ca/among-the-conspiracy-...

   The University of Miami’s College of Arts and Sciences and Political Science Department held what was likely the world’s first official academic Conference on Conspiracy Theories from March 12th to 14th. The event was attended by 45 social scientists, historians and philosophers, including this author, who was initially uncertain whether he had been invited as a colleague or specimen.

   Posted 9 years ago #
5. truthmod
   Administrator

   It seems that there's a great rise in knee-jerk conspiracy-phobia. It's irrational and extremely emotional nature is fascinating.

   It always entertaining to witness such glaring hypocrisy. There is something pathological going on here.

   How strange to think of a bunch of academics throwing Watergate and Iran Contra in one bin (legitimate conspiratorial history) and 9/11, JFK, moon landing hoax, shapeshifting aliens, "anti-vaxxers," flouridated water, chemtrails, etc. in another (whacko conspiracy theories that we can all laugh at).

   Posted 9 years ago #
6. mark
   Member

   Lance deHaven Smith's work is worth reading.

   I read his book, there were a lot of good (if basic) points in it.

   Unfortunately, his "sources" for 9/11 complicity were the no planes, etc. type promoters, not Paul Thompson, Mike Ruppert, suppressed warnings and overlapping wargames, Alec Station. I didn't get a sense in the book that he understood that it's more than a binary "conspiracy / no conspiracy," that there are also conspiracies to create fake claims of conspiracy to discredit looking at conspiracy. That's the reason for the "moon landing hoax," chemtrails, aliens, etc. woven into discussions of the coup against JFK and allowing 9/11, the American Reichstag Fire.

   Posted 9 years ago #

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