Almost Half of Americans Believe in at Least One Medical Conspiracy

Many tend to associate the belief in conspiracy theories with psychological disorders, but do we really think 49% of the U.S. population suffers from some sort of mental condition?

Study researcher, Eric Oliver, a professor of political science at the University of Chicago, surveyed over 1,300 people to gain insight toward peoples' belief in six popular medical conspiracies. The four notes in this Live Science article are the link between vaccines and autism; water fluoridation is a cover-up to allow companies to dump dangerous chemicals into the environment; the FDA is deliberately preventing the public from obtaining natural cures for cancers and other diseases because of pressure from drug companies; health officials know that cell phones cause cancer but do nothing about it because large corporations won't let them.

A total of 49% of the respondents agreed with at least one theory and 18% agreed with three or more of the six proposed theories. The highest percentage agreed with, "The FDA is deliberately preventing the public from getting natural cures for cancer and other diseases because of pressure from drug companies," which included 37% of the participants. Professor Oliver was not surprised with the study's results, as he has conducted a previous public opinion study on conspiracy theories.

Besides his most recent study, "Medical Conspiracy Theories and Health Behaviors," he wrote a paper back in June of 2012 on a similar topic. "Conspiracy Theories, Magical Thinking, and the Paranoid Styles of Mass Opinion," can be found here. In the paper, Oliver examined four nationally representative surveys taken between 2006 and 2011 that measured public opinion on conspiracy theories. The paper concluded that about half of the American public believed in at least one theory and that "conspiracism" is spurred by "magical thinking," which he defines as "a propensity to attribute the source of unexplained or extraordinary events to unseen, intentional forces."

After publishing that paper, Oliver received a research grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to further pursue the subject, which has culminated his most recent work published in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine. You can read more about Oliver's study in this Live Science article written by Rachael Rettner.