Elected officials know better yet dignify debunked conspiracy claims

Evidence

Delegitimation of authoritatively produced facts and conclusions has potentially dire consequences: the cumulative effect of long-standing attacks on vaccination and on policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions may be fatal. Elected officials who certainly know better go along, as Senator Rand Paul, a physician, did when, confronted with the conspiracist view that the measles vaccine causes autism—a claim contradicted emphatically by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the American Academy of Pediatrics—he equivocated. Responding to a question during a Republican debate in the fall of 2015 about the spurious vaccine-autism link, he answered, “I’m all for vaccines, but I’m also for freedom.” The senator understands herd immunity, which requires a high threshold of a community to be vaccinated, he knows that the vaccine-autism link is fraudulent, and he knows that there is no conspiracy to cover up the so-called link. His stand for “freedom” supports the freedom to ignore science and to refuse to comply with regulations protecting public health. The result is that physicians anticipate major outbreaks of preventable diseases. Conspiracism has the capacity to ignite a “disinformation pandemic.” — Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying, 235

Categorization

• XREF: Jumps out as an early, concrete instance of the knowledge-authority crisis traced in this chapter and echoes the learned-library material on manufactured dissent. — connects to: Politicians deploy conspiracy theories cynically as organizing tools and focal points. — Anna Merlan, Republic of Lies, 84; Officials who weaponize conspiracism risk believing their own fabrications — Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying: The New…, 273; Party officials uniquely positioned to rebut conspiracism instead acquiesce for electoral survival — Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying: The New…, 329 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Party officials uniquely positioned to rebut conspiracism instead acquiesce for electoral survival #corroborates (0.88) — Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying, 329
• Officials who weaponize conspiracism risk believing their own fabrications #expands (0.82) — Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying, 273
• Elite reticence about conspiracism erodes public trust in whether representatives mean what they say #expands (0.75) — Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying, 331
• Conspiracy peddlers privately act on the truths they publicly deny #contradicts (0.72) — Anna Merlan, Republic of Lies, 995