We are in an age of information; this is of course not a novel claim. An astrological cycle involving the planets Jupiter and Saturn indicates that we are shifting from a 200-year ‘age of earth’ (focused on resource extraction and hierarchy) into a 200-year ‘age of air’ (focused on information and networking). Broadly speaking, astrologers of the past (and present!) use Jupiter-Saturn cycles for tracking shifts in social, cultural, and political matters.
The amount of accessible information is awesomely overwhelming, and it is impossible to fully understand, verify, and sort such quantities of information. How information is distributed, shared, controlled, and communicated affects our freedom to make informed choices, and thus influences our relationships, identity, and wellbeing. Thus the consequences of how we relate to and process information are significant. I’m sure I’m not the only one who has lost social media contacts and friends over posting (or not posting) a given piece of news.
We know that the human brain has evolved to efficiently sort information in ways that save time and protect our bodies and social relationships. We sort information using heuristics (quick-and-dirty methods that favour speed over accuracy) to ascribe value and importance to novel bits of information. We judge the validity and accuracy of information by judging the person who shared it and the people who buy into it. In a time of information overload, our evolved cognitive biases are becoming especially apparent, as we struggle to cope with more and more information.
The choice to wear a mask or not is based on bits of information we receive and becomes a signal of which team or tribe we belong to. Are you a freedom-loving/government-hating right-winger? Or are you a free-thinking, skeptical, truth-seeking left-winger? Etcetera.
One method of coping with large volumes of information that is receiving significant media and research attention in today’s chaotic climate is conspiracy theorizing. That more and more people appear to be ‘buying into’ conspiracy theories is a popular topic of discussion all over the Internet (watch the flat earth doc on Netflix, for example) as well as in scientific publications. Social media giants such as Facebook are even trying to limit the spread of potentially dangerous conspiracy theories.
There are multiple so-called conspiracy theories that I myself find compelling, so I am not here to judge and label people for being conspiracy thinkers. I believe that people are trying to make sense of a complex reality, one that is unfortunately rife with corruption at multiple systemic levels (eg. Jeffrey Epstein). So, we might start with the assumption that information overload, managing uncertainty in scary times, plus lack of trust in systems responsible for organizing and transmitting information all make the ground fertile for conspiracy theories to spread.
Such type of thinking is also linked to personality features, such as suspiciousness and paranoia. People can range from being very paranoid to very trusting. Some people will be more geared toward these ideas than others, but unprecedented times such as Covid appear to be drawing more people into these ideas.
I think we can all empathize with the desire to understand, and when a conspiracy theory offers a unifying explanation for something complicated and dangerous (such as infectious disease), we might be more likely to accept that explanation, especially when the alternative might be the woefully uncertain ‘no one really knows exactly what is going on or how to best improve the situation’.
Here, I’m interested in exploring one piece of the conspiracy puzzle, specifically with respect to why some people become interested in conspiracy theories involving medical or scientific topics. A theme we see here is intensive distrust and rejection of expertise. I share a few examples below from my own experiences in science and academia and life in general, to highlight how distrust in science and medicine might emerge and grow, creating an opening for people to distrust official narratives and lean into conspiracy thinking.
Basically, I think that individuals who practice medicine and science regularly fail to step up to their responsibility to clearly communicate with people outside of science and medicine. The division between ‘expert’ and ‘lay person’ leads to ‘experts’ shutting down observations and anecdotes that do not fit with their learned body of knowledge. This leads to a breakdown of trust. I’m sure I’m over-simplifying things, but here are a few relevant examples I’ve observed:
I’ve had scientists tell me to exclude a diagram of a silhouette of a woman’s body from a paper about female reproductive physiology in favour of a figure of just a brain and a uterus, because the disembodied version “is more scientific”. This person did come around to my point of view, thankfully, but it reveals an odd and problematic point of view in some scientists - that the reality of a body is too messy or somehow inappropriate to be included in the world of science.
I’ve recently had a scientist criticize my pronunciation of a word because my version sounded too ‘lay’ and not ‘academic’. Is the goal of academia to separate ourselves as ‘smarter’ than others through pronouncing words differently? I thought it was to communicate knowledge, in a way that the public can understand and perhaps even benefit from! This type of behaviour further divides ‘lay person’ and ‘expert’ and doesn’t honour one of the main parts of the scientific process – to criticize IDEAS.
Two years ago, I attended a large conference about behavour through an evolutionary lens. While I was there, not one, but TWO ‘big name’ speakers explicitly REFUSED to answer audience questions! As I said previously, a core part of the scientific method is the open exchange and criticism of ideas.
The typical expectation at a conference is that a speaker shares their ideas for about ¾ of their allotted time, and then answers questions from the audience for the final quarter. What kind of example does IGNORING QUESTIONS set for students and researchers in the audience? How does a scientist promote trust in their work when they use their status as a ‘top researcher’ in their field to simply refuse to address a challenge to their ideas? I sincerely felt embarrassed for and a bit disgusted by the evolutionary psychologist who did this (as if evolutionary psychology doesn’t suffer from enough PR issues already).
A final example concerns vaccinations and the behaviour of family doctors. I know two parents whose children experienced severe reactions following a vaccination (different ages, different vaccinations, different reactions, both kids are doing fine now). When each of these people visited their doctor to explain what was happening, each doctor immediately refused the possibility that the vaccination might have contributed to the child’s condition (a seizure in one case, and severely-disturbed sleep and bodily twitching in the other case).
Each parent had read on Internet message boards (and people who do this are often ridiculed by others) that other children had experienced similar reactions following those specific types of vaccinations. Each parent’s doctor shut down the possibility of a connection! I am not saying that in either case vaccination was or was not responsible for the symptoms, but for a doctor to ignore the totally reasonable HYPOTHESIS that the two events were linked is unscientific as well as highly dismissive of a parent’s knowledge of their own child. I’m sure this type of dismissal directly contributes to dropping vaccination compliance.
As someone early into her scientific career, I am grateful to be surrounded by many influential and high-quality mentors and scientists. I receive ample support and encouragement in my scientific career. So my observations here are not an attack on anyone in particular, but I am trying to highlight instances where individuals practicing science (or medicine) unintentionally interfere with the aims of science, and thus sow seeds of distrust in these important forms of information.
Whether or not this plays a major role in how people relate to conspiracy theories is unknown, but I personally believe there is some linkage.
If ‘experts’ take the time to honour the goals and processes of science and medicine, we can perhaps increase trust, and decrease the seduction of all-explaining conspiracy theories.