Conspiracy theories are dangerous—here’s how to crush them
An interview with Nancy L. Rosenblum and Russell Muirhead, authors of “A Lot of People Are Saying”
By N.C.
GONE ARE the days when conspiracy-mongers had to find shards of evidence and contort it to convince people. Now, just their malevolence is needed. If a concocted scenario can’t be proved, then perhaps it can’t be disproved either. That is toxic for a stable society and politics. So how did we get here, and how do we get out?
Nancy L. Rosenblum of Harvard University and Russell Muirhead of Dartmouth College are the authors of “A Lot of People Are Saying: The New Conspiracism and the Assault on Democracy” (Princeton, 2019). Though conspiracy theories have always existed, they note that today something is different and dangerous: “Conspiracy without the theory.”
More from Open Future
“Making real the ideals of our country”
Cory Booker, a Democratic senator from New Jersey, on racial justice, fixing racial income inequality—and optimism
How society can overcome covid-19
Countries can test, quarantine and prepare for the post-coronavirus world, says Larry Brilliant, an epidemiologist
Telemedicine is essential amid the covid-19 crisis and after it
Online health care helps patients and medical workers—and will be a legacy of combating the novel coronavirus, says Eric Topol of Scripps Research