Conspiracy Theories

The Chandos portrait, likely Shakespeare, early 17th century

The Paranoid Style in Shakespeare Denialism

Against conspiracist trends, there is an obligation on defenders of a liberal society to uphold the integrity of its intellectual methods.

Oliver Kamm

2 May 2024 · 25 min read

Aliens...Again!

This time, they always say, it could be different.

Michael Shermer

8 Jun 2023 · 10 min read

Military-Industrial Complexities

President Eisenhower’s warning deserves to be better understood.

George Case

26 Apr 2023 · 6 min read

The Rise of the Respectable Conspiracy Theory

COVID, Trump, Brexit—everybody’s had something to break their brains in recent years and some people may never recover.

Christopher J. Snowdon

31 Mar 2023 · 14 min read

Fantastical Beliefs in a Post-Christian Age

Without a faith, people must find new sources of meaning, new congregations to which they can belong.

Patrick Parkinson

20 Mar 2023 · 12 min read

At the Corner of Camp and Lafayette

New Orleans has a starring role in many JFK conspiracy theories—as I learned during an odd but memorable street tour.

Jonathan Kay

14 Mar 2023 · 9 min read

Wired for Conspiracism

The fact that some conspiracy theories do sometimes turn out to be true helps explain why our minds are evolutionarily programmed to catastrophize.

Michael Shermer

30 Oct 2022 · 8 min read

Lessons from Hannah Arendt on Arresting Our ‘Flight From Reality’

Fascism, communism, and transhumanism all lure us into rejecting the real human condition in favor of ideological constructs.

Roger Berkowitz

19 Sep 2022 · 13 min read

An Outback Conspiracy

Misinformation results from the toxic combination of these two defining features, a lack of proximity to the Territory, and viewing the world through the lens of oppression.

Matthew Blackwell

28 Nov 2021 · 12 min read

Understanding the Motivated Reasoning of Anti-Vax Refuseniks

Vaccine refusal also correlates with a feeling of alienation from the wider culture—what sociologists call “anomie.”

Richard Redding

15 Sep 2021 · 5 min read

Twenty Years Later, Engineering Experts Explain How The Twin Towers Collapsed

Some have questioned why the buildings did not “topple over” after being struck side-on by aircraft. But the answer becomes clear once you consider the details.

Quillette

11 Sep 2021 · 5 min read

In Defence of Absolute Truth

By rejecting any universally applicable standards of reason, it destroys the possibility of true conversation, of learning from and compromising with each other.

Alan S. Rome

30 Jun 2021 · 17 min read

COVID-19 Conspiracists and Their Discontents

The mind abhors a vacuum of explanation. So when gaps in knowledge open up, the empty spaces are filled with available explanations that, however implausible, seem morally compelling.

Michael Shermer

7 May 2020 · 9 min read

NARRATED: My Misspent Years of Conspiracism

Quillette

22 Nov 2019 ·

Reason and Reality in an Era of Conspiracy

There’s nothing particularly surprising or even interesting about such failures of memory. Our memories are deeply fallible and highly suggestible.

Stephen T. Asma

19 Dec 2017 · 11 min read