Paper On Conspiratorial Thinking Invokes Conspiratorial Thinking

Layzej writes "Last summer a paper investigating the link between conspiratorial thinking and the rejection of climate science provoked a response on blogs skeptical of the scientific consensus that appeared to illustrate the very cognitive processes at the center of the research. This generated data for a new paper titled 'Recursive fury: Conspiracist ideation in the blogosphere in response to research on conspiracist ideation (PDF).' The researchers reviewed the reactions for evidence of conspiratorial thinking, including the presumption of nefarious intent, perception of persecution, the tendency to detect meaning in random events, and the ability to interpret contrary evidence as evidence that the conspiracy is even greater in scope that was originally believed. Some of the hypotheses promoted to dismiss the findings of the original paper ultimately grew in scope to include actors beyond the authors, such as university executives, a media organization, and the Australian government. It is not clear whether the response to this paper will itself provide data for further research, or how far down this recursion could progress. I fear the answer may be 'all the way.'"

Comments

turtles

[stoolpigeon]

all the way down.

The turtles are behind it all in the end.

Re:first

[webmistressrachel]

"from the elvis-lives-on-the-moon-with-hitler dept." - from the strapline of the title...

I was convinced beyond all doubt that Elvis was living with Diana in a guest house in Blackpool, but then again, I am a Brit, so I would think that...

Re:It is Psychology, Science! Fact!

[KeensMustard]

You do realise that a political allegiance doesn't actually allow to escape the bonds of reality? that the scientific method has nothing at all to do with negotiating a mutually acceptable solution for everybody?

"Cheese Makes you Fat!"

"Shows what you know! I'm in the CHEESEMAKING PARTY! Cheese will just give me a healthy glow!"

"I'm sorry Mr Ridebacher, you have lung cancer"

"No, that's unacceptable. You're interfering with my rights! Tell you what, why don't we compromise and say that I have a bad cold?"

Sneaky scientists

[adamjv]

Isn't it obvious? The researchers paid dozens of bloggers to come up with these conspiracy theories. The blogs were used as evidence to support the hypotheses in the follow-up paper, which will earn the researchers enough cash to pay more bloggers. And so on.

It's kinda like the way McAfee and Symantec have secret programmers who strategically release new viruses when business is slow.

Re:Yo dawg

[Kell Bengal]

Wait a minute! Who told you?!!