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Conspiracy theories during COVID-19 When Professor Clive Hamilton recently suggested that COVID-19 emerged from a Chinese laboratory he was careful to insist that he was putting forward an ‘accident hypothesis’, rather than a ‘conspiracy theory’. This is rather disingenuous of him, since if his hypothesis of an accidental laboratory leak is correct, then there has certainly been a conspiracy by Chinese authorities to cover up the accident. Why does Hamilton deny that he is putting forward a conspiracy theory, despite the fact that he appears to be doing just that? The answer of course is that conspiracy theories have had a bad reputation, ever since the philosopher Sir Karl Popper first popularised the expression. To characterise a theory as a conspiracy theory is to imply that it is false and that anyone who believes it, or wants to investigate whether it’s true, is irrational. On the face of it, this is hard to understand. After all, people do conspire. That is, they engage in secretive or deceitful behaviour that is illegal or morally questionable. Conspiracy is common in all cultures throughout history, and it has always been particularly prevalent in politics. Most people conspire some of the time, and some people (e.g. spies) conspire almost all the time. Since people conspire, there can’t be anything wrong with believing they conspire, thus there can’t be anything wrong with believing conspiracy theories. Thinking of conspiracy theories as characteristically false and irrational is like thinking of scientific theories in this way. It is as if we thought of phrenology as a paradigmatic scientific theory.
Example of a COVID-19 conspiracy meme
Conspiracy theories, like scientific theories, and virtually any other category of theory, are sometimes true,
Dr David Coady Senior Lecturer in Philosophy & Gender Studies University of Tasmania
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Sentry
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AUGUST 2020
