How to take on Covid conspiracy theories
As a science writer, one learns quickly to be wary of conspiracy theorists. I was recently reminded why when a well-known conspiracy theorist branded me, Public Health England, a BBC journalist and various others as enemies of the people.
In a now-removed YouTube video, I’m told he insisted followers should be “going to these people’s addresses and making arrests for crimes against humanity and genocide and the covering up of genocide”. The crime in question? Pointing out that, contrary to his narrative, 5G was not causing Covid-19.
During this first great pandemic of the digital age, the spectre of a shadow plague has also haunted us: the unstoppable rise of health disinformation. According to the YouGov-Cambridge Globalism Project, more than a quarter of people in the UK and US subscribe to at least one conspiratorial Covid belief.
Conspiracy theories themselves are nothing new. What sets their adherents apart is the defining trait of conspiratorial ideation — the tendency to attribute events to secret manipulations by clandestine groups.
This worldview has no room for coincidence, ineptitude or randomness. Events are engineered by a nebulous “them”, pantomime villains with sinister intent. Conspiracy theories pivot on the idea that nefarious groups are responsible for events, even when other explanations are far more probable.
This is exemplified by an enduring myth of the pandemic — the claim, amplified across social media by celebrities from Amir Khan to Woody Harrelson, that Covid is linked to the 5G radio frequency. Viruses are not caused by radio waves, nor pandemics by committee. But a deficit of merit has unfortunately not been any impediment to its propagation. Such high acceptance has been the impetus for a spate of arson attacks on cell towers worldwide, with Britain alone recording more than 70 attacks since the pandemic began.
It is tempting to dismiss this as the delusions of an extreme fringe, safely removed from our lives. Yet that drastically understates the problem. Where conspiracy theorists once seemed alien to us, they are now our uncles and aunts, sisters and brothers — even our partners. Conspiracy theory thrives in uncertain times. As Daniel Jolley, a psychologist at Northumbria University, puts it: “Everyone is susceptible to conspiracy theorising — where feelings of anxiety and uncertainty bloom, conspiracy theory may be quite appealing.”
Those worst affected come from all walks of life and defy stereotypes — and can even include healthcare professionals and scientists who should know better. Wisconsin pharmacist Steven Brandenburg, for example, is facing criminal charges of sabotaging 570 doses of the Covid vaccine after becoming convinced of conspiracy theories around it, while the Italian doctors’ association was recently forced to discipline 10 members for spreading Covid conspiracies and anti-vaccine propaganda.
This demonisation of the very vaccines we need to alleviate the misery of the past year seems perverse, especially given worldwide anxieties over supply. Yet vaccination is a longstanding exemplar of the harm caused by health disinformation. The past decade has seen plummeting vaccine uptake in many countries and the harrowing resurgence of once-conquered diseases. In 2019, the deteriorating situation forced the World Health Organization to declare vaccine hesitancy, a reluctance to vaccinate, a top 10 threat to public health.
The MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) vaccine controversy is a well-known demonstration of the damage this can wreak. In 1998, the gastroenterologist Andrew Wakefield claimed a link between triple-shot vaccines and autism. This conjecture was bereft of any appropriate substantive evidence, and at odds with the overwhelming weight of published science. Yet steadily, championed by anti-vaccine activists, Wakefield’s suspect thesis spread. Before long, UK newspapers were lauding him as a “champion of ordinary parents”.
What happened next was tragic, and inevitable. Across western Europe, MMR vaccine uptake fell precipitously. Measles, being incredibly infectious, requires 95 per cent vaccine uptake to achieve herd immunity; in 2003, average uptake in England slumped to a low of 79 per cent.
Wakefield became a poster boy for the anti-vaccine community, and the social media era amplified his fame and fabrications further, including starring in a 2016 anti-vaccine film-cum-hagiography. When he went on Irish regional radio during that promotional tour, I reluctantly appeared to counter his assertions. Predictably, he painted himself as a Galileo-like figure, insisting the entire scientific establishment (myself included) were engaged in a massive conspiracy against him.
But the MMR debacle is about more than just the hubris of one man. It illustrates something critical about medical disinformation. Vaccine hesitancy is not a simple binary, but a spectrum towards whose extremes we can be nudged. The vast majority who opted not to vaccinate their children then were not dyed-in-the-wool anti-vaccine activists, but anxious parents eager to do what was right for their children. Confronted with frightening claims, unsure of what to believe, parents were scared into inaction.
Anti-vaccine propaganda may be readily debunked, and frequently entirely contradictory, yet its sheer ubiquity gives it an illusion of substance. This is an example of what psychologists describe as illusory truth phenomena, where repeated exposure to a falsehood can prime us to implicitly accept it, even when we know it to be incorrect on an intellectual level. This flaw in our cognitive armour is exacerbated by our tendency to give vivid and easily recalled anecdotes more weight than more sober-headed data. My frequent discussions with vaccine-hesitant parents indicate that this is intuitively understood in anti-vaccine propaganda, which relies on shocking stories that unsettle us on an emotive, visceral level.
This perception affects us all to varying degrees. Dr Mike Banna, a GP, explains: “I consider myself to be informed enough about the pandemic to be desperate to have the vaccine, and informed enough about the vaccine to write articles about it, have it, recommend it to patients and administer it. And yet, on the day of my first jab I found myself with an unexpected pang of anxiety that I knew was not only unfounded but contrary to things I knew to be true. Fortunately, I was able to reconcile it with science, but not everyone is so lucky.”
The uncomfortable reality is that we are all to some extent vulnerable to falsehood, with neither education nor intelligence a perfect shield against it. Psychological factors are even more significant — conspiratorial narratives offer a tantalising sensation of control, a veneer of epistemic grounding. Such ostensible understanding fulfils a need to make sense of the world around us and our place in it.
Conspiracy theories also provide a totem against uncertainty and a sense of power over events. That we can be so thoroughly waylaid by an unseen assailant, itself not even technically alive, is disconcerting, especially when no one is directly responsible. It is easier for some to believe that nefarious agents, be they Bill Gates or George Soros, concocted the virus rather than accept that events are more frequently in the lap of the gods than we acknowledge.
The extent of the problem on social media is hard to overstate. A 2018 study analysing more than 126,000 news stories between 2006 and 2017 found that by all metrics, the volume and spread of rumour, hoax and falsehood utterly eclipsed truth online. Another telling study found that misinformation thrived online because users tended to “aggregate in communities of interest, which causes reinforcement and fosters confirmation bias, segregation and polarisation”. Online, wrong-headed beliefs are not countered but reinforced.
It is important to remember that people who subscribe to such beliefs are often victims of conspiracy theorists. Floridian Brian Lee Hitchens and his wife Erin subscribed to Covid hoax claims, eschewing precautions. Erin fell ill, dying at only 46, and Brian has since implored others not to make their mistake.
How we disabuse people of misguided beliefs is a vexing but critical consideration. Empathy is imperative; ridicule or dismissal is a knee-jerk reaction, but a deeply counterproductive approach. Few take kindly to being mocked, and perceived insults tend to drive someone to disengage and entrench further in their position. Part of the reason for this is our propensity towards identity protective cognition — the tendency to define ourselves by our beliefs and to cherry-pick evidence in accordance with existing group beliefs. Accordingly, an attack on an idea is too often viewed as a broadside against someone’s character.
A Socratic approach, based on asking and answering questions, can be extremely effective at inducing a change of mind. Rather than an adversarial engagement, the aim is to stimulate critical thinking. Asking a hesitant individual “what information would help you accept a Covid vaccine?” is, in my experience, a more fruitful strategy than admonishment. Rather than making them feel attacked, this gives them impetus to reflect on things they may have accepted on a purely emotional level, and freedom to change their mind under their own agency. In one study, subscribers to the idea that the Moon landing was a hoax were more likely to change tack when the evidence they subscribed to was questioned in such a manner.
Empathy has limits, though, and we must choose our battles. Much conspiracy theory is replete with contempt for expertise. Research on the most vocal conspiracy theorists indicates that they pride themselves on being too special to be duped. This does not appear to be a function of education or political leaning: one French study found anti-maskers spread across the political spectrum and often with experience of higher education. The unifying feature of these disparate groups was rejection of authority and an image of themselves as “free-thinkers”. Psychological studies consistently show a significant proportion motivated by an egotistical drive to be different.
For such people, it is not about consistency, or understanding, but the allure of feeling they know more than others. This appears especially intoxicating to some, and nigh-on impossible to address. One telling experiment found that dedicated conspiracy theorists were able to simultaneously accept premises that Osama bin Laden was both alive and dead at once, provided they felt they were privy to a conspiracy others were not (this ingenious experiment, incidentally, inspired me to name a chapter “Schrödinger’s Bin Laden” in my recent book). Such individuals are impervious to evidence and engaging with this extreme fringe is likely a waste of one’s time and energy.
As a note of caution, sharing a conspiracy theory in order to debunk it is rife with problems. One feature of the social media infrastructure is that it strips information of context. The adage that all publicity is good publicity is even more true online; it does not matter why you shared an article, this share reverberates. All too often, the net effect is that bad ideas reach new audiences.
The sobering reality is that there is no panacea against the ravages of conspiracy theory. Research seems to suggest prevention is better than cure, and it is easier to train people to spot potential falsehood than disabuse them of wrong-headed notions. Karen Douglas, a professor of psychology at Kent University, puts it succinctly: “We know that inoculation against conspiracy theories can sometimes work, but we need more research to fully understand when and how this technique is effective. We also need to know more about what interpersonal strategies are likely to steer people away from conspiracy theories.”
None of us are immune to disinformation, and all of us are affected. Whether it is Covid vaccine hesitancy or QAnon zealots storming the Capitol, recent events are a potent reminder that conspiracy theories threaten not only societal cohesion, but our collective wellbeing. Whether the apparent antipathy towards Covid vaccines pushes down uptake remains to be seen, but the damage wrought by anti-vaccine and anti-mask propaganda can no longer be ignored. Health disinformation is endemic, harmful and will only grow unless rapidly addressed. Precisely how we do that, however, remains an open, urgent question. One legacy of the past year is the dawning realisation that we are more vulnerable to disinformation than we ever knew.
David Robert Grimes is a physicist, cancer researcher and author of ‘The Irrational Ape: Why We Fall for Disinformation, Conspiracy Theory and Propaganda’ (Simon & Schuster UK, published as ‘Good Thinking: Why Flawed Logic Puts Us All at Risk and How Critical Thinking Can Save the World’ in the US by The Experiment publishing)
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