Conspiracy theories

In these days that the corona virus spreads around the world theories about its origin seem to spread even faster ̶ theories that say that the virus has been made by some malicious scientists or politicians who have developed it for their own evil purposes. Here I cannot write about corona virus conspiracy theories as such in order to unmask them, but I think that this is a good occasion to write something about conspiracy theories in general in order to give you some handles that will help you to see why they are false.

Before I’ll present my arguments against conspiracy theories, I want to state clearly that I don’t deny that conspiracies happen. The murder of the American president Abraham Lincoln is a famous case in point. Nevertheless, I think that almost all if not all so-called conspiracy theories are false.

What then are conspiracy theories? Let’s see, for instance, what the Wikipedia says about it. According to the English version, a “conspiracy theory is an explanation of an event or situation that invokes a conspiracy by sinister and powerful actors, often political in motivation, when other explanations are more probable.” Already this definition points to a reason why conspiracy theories are false. Often they suppose a complicated network of ­ internationally ­ cooperating scientists, politicians and administrators, although in practice such networks always are difficult to realize. Moreover, as a rule there are much simpler theories to explain the phenomenon (event or situation) that conspiracy theories try to explain. Then argumentation theorists say: Use Ockham’s razor. The 14th century philosopher William van Ockham said already that you must cut away what makes your explanation complicated. Simplest is best. It’s true that viruses can be made by man and spread among a population or in a country that you want to destroy. However, already as long as man exists and before man could construct viruses, they came into being spontaneously and killed people arbitrarily. Why would it now be different?

So, preferably a theory must be simple, but it should also be likely. Some say that the Chinese themselves have spread the virus. Do you really think that they are so stupid to hurt if not destroy their own population?

Next, any theory must be formulated that way, so methodologists say following Karl R. Popper, that it can be falsified. However, many conspiracy theories are formulated in such a vague manner that they cannot be tested. So, if a theory says that a virus has been escaped from a secret laboratory somewhere, ask then exactly which laboratory? For a really secret laboratory cannot be discovered if it is really secret, which makes the theory a circular argument. Or, even more extreme: “They want to make you think that there is no conspiracy.” We have come full circle.

A related argument against conspiracy theories is that people believing them tend to look for information that seems to confirm the theory concerned and to ignore information that contradicts it. This is the so-called confirmation bias. People in the West tend to believe that China has something to hide about the corona virus, while they ignore that the WHO praises China’s openness. Moreover, people tend to be uncritical towards information that seems to confirm their views. So, videos on the Internet tell us that people in China got the corona virus by eating bat soup. However, these videos have not been taken in China and there is no proof that bats have anything to do with the present corona virus.

My handbook on fallacies mentions yet a few other bad arguments that are often used in support of conspiracy theories. I’ll mention them here in brief without much comment. These bad arguments are:

- Moving the goal post: If one argument for the conspiracy is rejected, it is simply replaced by another related argument.

- Proof by verbosity: Using a lot of words in order to obfuscate your case. This can include giving random information (or even misinformation) that is not relevant but that gives the impression to support the case. For who will check it?

- Big events have big causes: The idea that if a phenomenon is very important and has big consequences, it cannot have a simple explanation. A simple virus with a natural origin cannot have such a big impact as the corona virus unless it has been brought in the world on purpose by some people.

So far my short treatise why conspiracy theories are false. However, each conspiracy theory has its own characteristics. Theoretical arguments must be specified for individual cases and once a conspiracy theory has been undermined another one will pop up. So, the main lesson of this blog is: Be critical, and don’t believe what others say, simply because they say it; and don’t belief what is on the Internet simply because it is on the Internet. Think yourself.

Sources

- Arp, Robert; Steven Barbone; Michael Bruce (eds.), Bad arguments. 100 of the most important fallacies in Western philosophy. Oxford, etc.: Wiley Blackwell, 2019.

- Keulemans, Maarten, “Vaste prik bij virusuitbraken: complottheorieën. Hoe wapen je je ertegen?”, https://www.volkskrant.nl/wetenschap/vaste-prik-bij-virusuitbraken-complottheorieen-hoe-wapen-je-je-ertegen~bc545426/?referer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2F

- other websites