About half of all American adults believe in at least one medical conspiracy theory, according to a study from researchers at the University of Chicago in Illinois and published in JAMA Internal Medicine.
Conspiracy theories concerning aliens, secret societies and shadowy governmental organizations have become a firm trope in popular culture thanks to cult television shows, novels and movies like The X-Files and The Da Vinci Code. But conspiracy theories have also sprouted up around numerous public health concerns over the past 50 years.
Water fluoridation, vaccines, cell phones and alternative medicine, for instance, are all subjects of conspiracy-based speculation, but to what extent do the American public put faith in these uncorroborated theories?
The University of Chicago's Prof. J. Eric Oliver put this to the test in his new study. Prof. Oliver and his colleague used an online survey to collect data from 1,351 adults between August and September 2013.
In the survey, participants were presented with popular medical conspiracy theories and asked to indicate whether they had heard of them before and whether they agreed or disagreed with them.
The theories all had a mistrust of government and large organizations as central themes. Some of the theories the participants were asked if they believed included:
- Are US regulators preventing people from getting natural cures?
- Did a US spy agency infect a large number of black Americans with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)?
- Does the government knowingly give autism-causing vaccines to children?
- Does the government know that cell phones cause cancer but does nothing about it?
- Do companies dump dangerous chemicals into the environment under the guise of water fluoridation?
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