The Covid-19 and the Defeat of Conspiracy Theories: The Renewal of Public Faith in Scientific Research

• Main Author: Roberto Veraldi
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Accademia Piceno Aprutina dei Velati 2020-12-01
• Series: Science & Philosophy
• Subjects: covid-19; conspiracy theories; scientific research
• Online Access: http://eiris.it/ojs/index.php/scienceandphilosophy/article/view/536

Conspiracy theories integrate, connect and catalogue together what are clearly independent and unrelated events in order to demonstrate correlation and construct impossible, fabricated tales of causation (Bessi, et al., 2015). In a narrative sense, these extremely sophisticated stories are often very intriguing, and their diffusion comes about due to a legitimate desire to enrich the non-scientific literature available.  In other cases, despite the cultural maturity of the Western world, conspiracy theories are promoted as real news, able to upset public opinion and to involve a part of the population in Pindaric flights. Moreover, in many cases the creators of these illogical conspiracies are held as suffragists of so-called ‘free thought’, departing from mainstream theories and opening up the mind of the population to new and elevated levels of comprehension of reality (Melley, 2000) and at the moment, the spread of Covid-19 produces a greater awareness of the societal role of the individual.