6 Scientific American, July 2019LETTERS
[email protected]CONSPIRACY DRIVERS
Melinda Wenner Moyer’s article on “Why
We Believe Conspiracy Theories” took me
back about a decade to when I was a
member of a team of HIV/AIDS research-
ers and activists battling the denialists
who variously argued that HIV did not ex-
ist, was not the cause of AIDS or was cre-
ated in government laboratories for evil
purposes. At that time, AIDS denialists in-
fluenced national policies on HIV/AIDS in
South Africa, costing an estimate of more
than 300,000 lives, and manipulated vul-
nerable individuals worldwide to make
health-threatening choices.
Much of what Moyer describes reso-
nates with my experiences (such as threats
and smears regularly sent to my universi-
ty’s administration or me) and the collec-
tive strategies employed by my colleagues
and me. We, too, found that most of the
more prominent HIV/AID denialists were
also members of other conspiracy groups,
whether health-related or more generally.
This link was a weakness we could ex-
ploit, particularly for those with academic
connections: our pointing out to universi-
ties that a faculty member published on,
say, the existence of the Loch Ness Mon-
ster or how the U.S. faked the moon land-
ing helped to erode that person’s intramu-
ral credibility while having a positive ef-
fect on individuals who believed they were
receiving expert advice. And we could rea-
son with and better educate such at-risk
people, something that was utterly unpro-
ductive with the hard-core naysayers.
The AIDS denialists are still around.
Their damaging effects have diminished
in recent years, but many of them are now
active in the “anti-vaxxer” movement,
ped dling the lies that compromise vac-
cine uptake by a significant number of
people, with adverse public health out-
comes that are all too apparent. Publicly
naming and shaming these conspiracy
theorists for who and what they really
are—and what they also believe—can be
an effective tactic. The gloves should
come well and truly off.
John P. Moore Weill Cornell Medicine and
Scientific American ’s board of advisersNo writer on the topic of conspiracy theo-
ries can afford to overlook the remarkable
1964 essay “The Paranoid Style in Ameri-
can Politics,” by Richard Hofstadter, one
of the great scholars of American history,
who was active during the 1940s to 1960s.
It has been reprinted many times and is
currently available on the Internet. Hof-
stadter traces the recurrent waves of polit-
ical paranoia in American society going
back to the 18th century, listing the targets
of those waves, the similarities in how cer-
tain groups have responded to those per-
ceived threats, and the important differ-
ences between normal fears and concerns
and what he terms the “paranoid style.”
His analysis clearly parallels that pro-
posed in Moyer’s article. The targets have
changed over the years, but the story and
the style of its telling have not.
Sydney Ruth Keegan
Port Hadlock, Wash.Moyer notes that the perceived powerless-
ness in the face of real and imagined socialforces creates susceptibility to conspiracy
theories. Many believers in such theories
were driven into economic insecurity, de-
spite years of hard work in often highly
skilled occupations that did not require
college degrees. People who are financially
secure and who have an education condu-
cive to seeking out and evaluating evi-
dence are less vulnerable to such notions.
Jeff Freeman Rahway, N.J.SHARED FEELINGS
In “The Orca’s Sorrow,” Barbara J. King
presents accumulated observations that
suggest that animals grieve. Everyday ob-
servations strongly support that animals
experience emotions similarly to hu-
mans. The reverse would be quite sur-
prising because it would somehow call
for the evolution of emotions strictly or
separately in our species. Emotions are a
key driver of behavior and clearly have
deep and adaptive evolutionary roots.
Occam’s razor and sound science place
the burden of proof on those who deny
animals have them. A corollary is that
cruelty to animals is as intolerable as
cruelty to our fellow humans.
Richard Frenkel Swampscott, Mass.KING REPLIES: Emotions have indeed
evolved widely in the animal kingdom to
guide behavior. Yet denial of this cross-spe-
cies similarity still happens routinely: In
my article, I describe how the orca Tahle-
quah carried her dead calf for 17 days. In
the Guardian, zoological writer and con-
sultant Jules Howard writes that classify-
ing her behavior as grief means “making a
case that rests on faith not on scientific
endeavour.” Howard has it precisely back-
ward, though; it’s good science to recognize
visible evidence of animal emotion and of
evolutionary continuity. We owe it to ani-
mals to see them for who they are.MANIA FOR CLASSIFICATION
In “The Undiscovered Illness,” Simon Ma-
kin states that unipolar mania—mania
that does not occur alongside depressive
episodes—is not listed as a “distinct and
unalloyed condition” in diagnostic sys-
tems. But that does not mean it is neglect-
ed everywhere. The diagnosis features in
clinical practice, perhaps most commonly
in countries where formal classificationMarch 2019“Everyday
observa tions
strongly support
that animals
experience emotionssimilarly to humans.”
richard frenkel
swampscott, mass.