What's going on?

How to respond to conspiracy theories? Our discussion pieces on this issue have got people talking (click here and here for the initial posts).

With everyone agreeing that it’s important to counter myths, misinformation and irrationalism, there are nevertheless a range of different views on what is to be done.

Paddy emailed from Edinburgh stating that ‘I found the discussion on conspiracy theories very thought-provoking! Before I retired, my work took me into vaccines and the issues around vaccine scares, where conspiracy theories have found a fertile terrain. I very much agree on the need to engage and address the root causes of such irrationalism.

‘However, there’s a new phenomenon emerging now: conspiracy theories – or straight denial of reality of scientific facts such as relating to climate change – are being weaponised by powerful interests in new and destructive ways, and countering them is a whole new ballgame, which we struggle to respond to.

‘For example, on the specific issue of vaccines, the antivax people are now in positions of power in the USA, which has never happened before to my knowledge.

‘I have no clear answers on what new forms of political mobilising are needed to confront this, so I look forward to further discussion items on the topic!’

Other responses to our first article included the view that there’s a need for ‘a good education particularly in science, critical thinking and rationalism. Conspiracies are not only for the stupid but the lazy. It takes effort to learn how to research and study evidence or the lack of it’.

On Facebook, someone argued that healthy suspicion is at work in what the powerful call ‘conspiracy theories’. They say that people accused of conspiratorial thinking ‘look at things that seem wrong, but they do not see a logical explanation for them. Why the Unionists won the Scottish referendum in 2014 for instance with a reasonably clear majority still surprises me but having a bet on the result and seeing the odds that were even-stevens at the start of the day go decidedly towards a Unionist victory before voting finished and a vote meant to be counted still allows me to have a conspiracy theory about Scottish election officials. The simple explanation is that the referendum was rigged’.

Another person underlined the challenge of challenging conspiracy theories: ‘people who believe these things are unable to accept evidence of an alternative explanation because they are so fixated on the explanation which they believe to be true’.

One person posting on social media found our second article to be ‘gobbledegook’, whilst others found it ‘excellent’.

Other comments were that:

‘Conspiracy theories come from a desire to make some sense out of situations’.

‘Think of all the money florists make every time a celebrity dies suddenly, like Lady Di. It's the florists doing the killing ha ha … Seriously though, a belief in conspiracies can kill people through ignorance.  In my opinion, Andrew Wakefield is responsible for children's deaths. After being struck off for promoting false information about MMR jags, he was invited to America where he makes a living on the anti-vaccine preaching circuit’.

Finally, someone who was ‘reading yer last email with the link to the conspiracy articles’ let us know that ‘I’ve been tempted by conspiracy theories before, and I’ve got good pals that started out on “who shot JFK” and moved through fake moon landings to flat-earth theories. He got quite vehement for a bit, but we talked him round…  

‘Also, I think that a small proportion of the population own a vast proportion of the overall wealth, control the media, the banks and the governments and that they all know each other, so maybe there is a fucking conspiracy going on …’.

Contributions are still welcome to this ongoing discussion …

Published 21 October 2025.

Illustration: the scene outside Buckingham Palace in the days after the death of Diana Spencer in 1997. An accident in a situation where a driver was seeking to get away from paparazzi; murder committed, organised or encouraged by the royal family 'firm'; or a fatality somehow caused by florists with flowers to sell?