Skeptophilia (skep-to-fil-i-a) (n.) - the love of logical thought, skepticism, and thinking critically. Being an exploration of the applications of skeptical thinking to the world at large, with periodic excursions into linguistics, music, politics, cryptozoology, and why people keep seeing the face of Jesus on grilled cheese sandwiches.

Saturday, October 4, 2014

Worldviews, conspiracies, and Ebola

Sometimes I don't think that skeptics and conspiracy theorists speak the same language.

Oh, we're both saying words that the other understands; but there's a fundamental disconnect.  The worldviews are so incompatible that what one says makes no sense whatsoever to the other.

Take, for example, the change in the language in a statement on Ebola from the Public Health Agency of Canada.  Here's the original statement, with the relevant passage highlighted:
MODE OF TRANSMISSION: In an outbreak, it is hypothesized that the first patient becomes infected as a result of contact with an infected animal. Person-to-person transmission occurs via close personal contact with an infected individual or their body fluids during the late stages of infection or after death. Nosocomial infections can occur through contact with infected body fluids due to the reuse of unsterilized syringes, needles, or other medical equipment contaminated with these fluids. Humans may be infected by handling sick or dead non-human primates and are also at risk when handling the bodies of deceased humans in preparation for funerals, suggesting possible transmission through aerosol droplets. In the laboratory, infection through small-particle aerosols has been demonstrated in primates, and airborne spread among humans is strongly suspected, although it has not yet been conclusively demonstrated. The importance of this route of transmission is not clear. Poor hygienic conditions can aid the spread of the virus.
And the new statement, as of August 2014:
MODE OF TRANSMISSION: In an outbreak, it is hypothesized that the first patient becomes infected as a result of contact with an infected animal. Person-to-person transmission occurs via close personal contact with an infected individual or their body fluids during the late stages of infection or after death. Nosocomial infections can occur through contact with infected body fluids for example due to the reuse of unsterilized syringes, needles, or other medical equipment contaminated with these fluids. Humans may be infected by handling sick or dead non-human primates and are also at risk when handling the bodies of deceased humans in preparation for funerals.

In laboratory settings, non-human primates exposed to aerosolized ebolavirus from pigs have become infected, however, airborne transmission has not been demonstrated between non-human primates. Viral shedding has been observed in nasopharyngeal secretions and rectal swabs of pigs following experimental inoculation.
So what did I immediately think, upon finding out about this?  That the agency realized the information in the original statement was erroneous, and updated it to reflect the most recent research.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

What did the conspiracy theorists think?  Do I even need to tell you?  Here's a variety of responses, collected from a variety of conspiracy sites, commenting on the change:
They're pulling the wool over our eyes.  They've known that ebola can be transmitted airborne for years, but they don't want the public to know, because the panic will bring down government.  I'm surprised they let it slip that long. 
Any time there's a change in official government policy, be suspicious. 
If you people don't wake up to what the government is doing, it will be too late to stop a pandemic. 
They never want you to have any real information, so they keep shifting their ground.  It's a classic bait-and-switch, so you never see the catastrophe coming.
And my favorite one:
If you let yourself get this government death plague, you have only yourself to blame.
I must say, if I ever start a punk band, I'm going to call it "Government Death Plague."

Not that that's likely.  But still.

So anyway.  Two things about this strike me: (1) that presented with exactly the same facts, I came up with an entirely different conclusion than the conspiracy theorists did; and (2) that there is very likely no argument on either side that would convince the other that they were wrong.

That's what I mean about speaking different languages.  And I wonder where these radically different perspectives come from?  Is it as simple as optimism versus pessimism?  Or is it something more complicated than that?  It'd be interesting to do a comparative personality study on skeptics and conspiracy theorists.

But the conspiracy theorists would never go for that, of course.  They'd think the Illuminati were collecting background information on them so as to make it easier to round them up into FEMA camps.

You can't win.

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