Course Description
Disinformation and conspiracy theories are not a consequence of Web 2.0. They were prominent in Ancient Greece and have been linked to hunter gatherer societies. After the small-pox vaccine was developed in the 18th century it was rumoured that taking it would make you grow horns.
Conspiracy theories not only pertain to harms of scientific progress but also to scientific progress being withheld, such as the conspiracy theory that a cure for cancer is being deliberately kept secret from the public. Conspiracy theories appear to serve a universal psychological need for agency and certainty, among other psychological needs, in a threatening and uncertain world.
Although the development of the internet and social media are not themselves responsible for the spread of disinformation and conspiracy theories, nor their psychological appeal, they have removed the need for physical proximity to enable their spread. Thus, the rumours and disinformation that feed conspiracies have become more sophisticated and targeted with the advent of the internet and, it seems, more prevalent. This presents challenges for scientific progress that relies on public trust and participation.
This course will examine disinformation and conspiracy theories and their impact on science (as well as science’s impact on conspiracy theories), with a specific focus on medicine and vaccines. It will begin by exploring the psychology of conspiracy theories, before turning to evidence pertaining to the history and universality of conspiracy theories across societies. The course will then turn to case studies of conspiracy theories and vaccines prior to the internet 2.0, including the smallpox vaccine in the 18th century and the MMR vaccine in the late 20th century. The latter part of the course will shift focus to the internet and social media era, beginning again by looking at them from a psychological angle, e.g., Facebook and the influence of social pressure on beliefs, before examining vaccine hesitancy during the Covid-19 pandemic as a final case study. The course will conclude by considering how societies might combat disinformation in order to enhance scientific progress.

Learning outcomes of the course
Upon successful completion of this course, students should be able to:
(1) identify and discuss conspiracy theories through history
(2) place contemporary conspiracy theories in the global information age in context in presentations and written work.
(3) synthesize and critique major theories and arguments in the field.
(4) critically evaluate the implications of research and evidence for a given theory or historical account.

Syllabus

Conspiracy theories before vaccines
• Ancient Athens and the Roman Empire
• Conspiracy theories before vaccines: Middle Ages

Conspiracy theories about diseases and vaccines
• Smallpox
• HPV
• Polio
• MMR vaccine
• Monkeypox
• Covid-19

Conspiracy theories about cures withheld
• HIV/AIDS
• Cancer

The psychology of conspiracy theories
• Influences on beliefs in conspiracy theories
• Who are the conspiracy theorists?
• The role of the global information age

Combating disinformation and conspiracy theories
• Correcting disinformation, misinformation and malinformation

Detailed Syllabus

Please note that each week’s learning is divided broadly into an introduction and discussion class [IDC] for 1.5 hours. The second class is a group-work class
[GWC] running for 1.5 hours in which a further text, document or problem will be set for study groups to work/present on. This may introduce new material in the class itself forfurther work/analysis or you may be asked to bring your own material/experience to this class. Different groups may be assigned different readings. Before the RDC you must prepare by reading and making written notes (no more than 500 words, or one side of A4 paper) on the set or [required] text indicated.

Week 1. Introduction
Butter, Michael, and Peter Knight. 2020. “General Introduction.” In Michael Butter and Peter
Knight (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Conspiracy Theories [required].
Poland, Gregory, and Robert Jacobson. 2011. “The Age-Old Struggle against the Antivaccinationists.” New England Journal of Medicine 364(2): 97-99 [required].
Uscinski, Joseph, et al. 2022. “Have Beliefs in Conspiracy Theories Increased Over Time?”. PLoS ONE 17: e0270429 [required].

Kurtz, Michael. 2006. The JFK Assassination Debates: Lone Gunman versus Conspiracy, Chapter 4 [further reading].

Questions to consider:
Reflecting on the conspiracy theories surrounding the Kennedy assassination, what do you see as some of the common features of conspiracy theories, i.e., that we are likely to see with vaccines as well?
Why do people believe in conspiracy theories?
What is your answer to whether or not belief in conspiracy theories has increased over time?

Part 1: Conspiracy theories before vaccines

Week 2. Conspiracy theories in the Roman Empire and Middle Ages
Pagán, Victoria Emma. 2020. “Conspiracy Theories in the Roman Empire.” In Michael Butter and Peter Knight (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Conspiracy Theories [required].
Zwierlein, Cornel. 2020. “Conspiracy Theories in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period.” In Michael Butter and Peter Knight (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Conspiracy Theories [required].
Roisman, Joseph. 2006. The Rhetoric of Conspiracy in Ancient Athens [further reading] Questions to consider:
What are some of the key similarities and differences between conspiracy theories before vaccines?
Of the conspiracy theories we have encountered this week, which are most striking to you and why?
We cover a broad sweep of history. Are there differences between conspiracy theories in, for example, the Roman empire compared to the Middle Ages, or do you see all conspiracy theories as essentially the same?

Part 2: Conspiracy theories about diseases and vaccines

Week 3. Smallpox
“Smallpox vaccine ‘triggered AIDs virus’”. The Times (May 11, 1987) [required]
Barquet, Nicolau, and Pere Domingo. 1997. “Smallpox: The Triumph over the Most Terrible of the Ministers of Death.” Annals of Internal Medicine 127(8): 635-642 [required].

Porter, Dorothy, and Roy Porter. 1988. “The Politics of Prevention: Anti-Vaccinationism and Public Health in Nineteenth-Century England.” Medical History 32: 231-252
[required].
Wolfe, Robert, and Lisa Sharp. 2002. “Anti-vaccinationists Past and Present.” British Medical Journal 325: 430-432 [required].
Martini, M, M. Bifulco, and D. Orsini. 2022. “Smallpox Vaccination and Vaccine Hesitancy in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies (1801) and the Great Modernity of Ferdinand IV of Bourbon: A Glimpse of the Past in the Era of the SARS-COV-2 (Covid-19) Pandemic.” Public Health 213: 47-53 [further reading].
Nelson, Marie Clark, and John Rogers. 1992. “The Right to Die? Anti-vaccination Activity and the 1874 Smallpox Epidemic in Stockholm.” Social History of Medicine 5(3): 369-388 [further reading].
Swales, J.D. 1992. “The Leicester Anti-Vaccination Movement.” Lancet 340: 1019-1021. [further reading]

Questions to consider:
What is the scientific method? Does the smallpox example show that the scientific method itself feeds conspiracy theories?
What is the relationship between compulsory vaccination and the anti-vaccination movement?
Why didn't everyone simply celebrate the smallpox vaccine?

Week 4. Polio
https://historyofvaccines.org/history/polio/overview [required]
Drutz, Jan, and B. Lee Ligon. 2000. “Polio: Its History and Its Eradication.” Seminars in Pediatric Infectious Diseases 11(4): 280-286 [required].
Nathanson, Neal, and Olen Kew. 2010 “From Emergence to Eradication: The Epidemiology of Poliomyelitis Deconstructed.” American Journal of Epidemiology 172: 1213-1229 [required].
Mehndiratta, Man Mohan, and Prachi Mehndiratta. 2014. “Poliomyelitis: Historical Facts, Epidemiology, and Current Challenges in Eradication.” Neurohospitalist 4(4): 223-
229. [further reading].

Questions to consider:
To what extent is the polio vaccine a success story?
What are the main challenges to complete eradication of polio?
What do the remaining challenges to the eradication of polio tell us about the contemporary obstacles to the use of vaccines? Are they unique to the current era?

Week 5. Measles, Mumps, Rubella
https://historyofvaccines.org/history/measles/overview [required] https://historyofvaccines.org/diseases/mumps [required]
https://historyofvaccines.org/diseases/rubella-german-measles [required]

Wakefield AJ, SH Murch, A Anthony, J Linnell, DM Casson, M Malik M, et al. 1998 “Ileal-Lymphoid-Nodular Hyperplasia, Non-Specific Colitis, and Pervasive Developmental Disorder in Children.” Lancet 351: 637–41 [required].
DeStefano, Frank, and Robert Chen. 1999. “Negative Association between MMR and Autism.” Lancet 353:1987–93 [required].

Taylor, Brent, Elizabeth Miller, C. Paddy Farrington, Maria-Christina Petropoulos, Isabelle Favot-Mayaud, Jun Li, and Pauline Wright. 1999. “Autism and Measles, Mumps, and Rubella Vaccine: No Epidemiologic Evidence for a Causal Association.” Lancet 353: 2026–9 [required].
Horton, Richard. 2004. “A Statement by the Editors of The Lancet.” Lancet 363: 820-1 [required].
Eggertson Laura. 2010. “Lancet Retracts 12-year-old Article Linking Autism to MMR Vaccines.” Canadian Medical Association Journal 182: E199-200 [required].
Motta, Matthew, and Dominik Stecula. 2021. “Quantifying the Effect of Wakefield et al. (1998) on Skepticism about MMR Vaccine Safety in the U.S.” PLoS ONE 16(8): e0256395[required].
Deer, Brian. 2011. “How the Case Against the MMR Vaccine Was Fixed.” BMJ 342:c5347 [further reading].
Questions to consider:
The Wakefield et al. article about MMR is probably the most infamous vaccine scandal of the last quarter century. Why do you think the article had so much impact?
Why was the Wakefield et al. article ultimately retracted from The Lancet?
Are there still doubts about the MMR vaccine? What are they and what is their validity?

Week 6. Covid-19
Birchall, Clare, and Peter Knight. 2022. Conspiracy Theories in the Time of Covid-19, Chapters 3 and 4 [required]. I will assign you one of them.
Ramos, Mozer de Miranda, Rodirigo de Oliveira Machado, and Elder Cerqueira-Santos.
2022. “’It’s true! I saw it on WhatsApp’: Social Media, Covid-19, and Political-Ideological Orientation in Brazil.” Trends in Psychology 30(3): 570-590 [required].
Jetten, Joland, Stephen Reicher, S. Alexander Haslam, and Tegan Cruwys. 2020. Together Apart: The Psychology of COVID 19. Thousand Oaks: Sage [further reading].
Wolaver, Amy, and John Doces. 2021. “The Impact of COVID-19 and Political Identification on Framing Bias in an Infectious Disease Experiment: The Frame Reigns Supreme.” Social Science Quarterly 102(6): 2459-2471 [further reading]
Questions to consider:
What were the principal conspiracy theories around Covid-19? Did you encounter any of them?
Is Covid-19 an example of conspiracy theories many of which turned out to be true?
Did social media undermine efforts to tackle Covid-19?

MIDTERM BREAK

Part 3: Conspiracy theories about cures withheld

Week 7. HIV/AIDS and Cancer
Hogg, Robert, Busisiwe Nkala, Janan Dietrich, Alexandra Collins, Kalysha Closson, Zishan Cui, Steve Kanters, Jason Chia, Bernard Barhafuma, Alexis Palmer, Angela Kaida, Glenda Gray, and Cari Miller. 2017. “Conspiracy Beliefs and Knowledge about HIV Origins among Adolescents in Soweto, South Africa.” PLOS One 12(2): e0165087 [required].

Sissung, Tristan, and William Figg. 2021. “Facebook Groups for Alternative Treatments for Cancer: Advertising Masquerading as Community Support.” Lancet Oncology 22(1): 25-6 [required].
Zekeri, Andrew, Tsegaye Habtemariam, Berhanu Tameru, David Ngawa, and Vinaida Robnett. 2009. “Conspiracy Beliefs about HIV/AIDS among HIV-Positive African-
American Patients in Rural Alabama.” Psychological Reports 104: 388-394 [required].
Zhang, Jueman, Yi Wang, Magali Mouton, Jixuan Zhang, and Molu Shi. 2024. “Public Discourse, User Reactions, and Conspiracy Theories on the X Platform About HIV Vaccines: Data Mining and Content Analysis.” Journal of Medical Internet Research 26: e53375 [required].
Varet, Florent, Valentyn Fournier, and Sylvain Delouvée. 2025. “Assessing the Role of Conspiracy Beliefs in Oncological Treatment Decisions: An Experimental Approach.” Applied Psychology: Health and Well-Being 17: e12615 [further reading].

Questions to consider:
Are there differences in conspiracy theories about cures withheld as opposed to theories about cures (vaccines) that cause harm? What are they?
What are some of the demographic and individual-level influences on beliefs that cures for HIV/Aids and cancer are being kept from us?
What is it about these particular influences? Are there mediators, e.g., effects on beliefs or values that explain these relationships?

Part 4: The Psychology of Conspiracy Theories

Week 8. Who are the Conspiracy Theorists?
Galliford, Natasha, and Adrian Furnham. 2017. “Individual Difference Factors and Beliefs in Medical and Political Conspiracy Theories.” Scandinavian Journal of
Psychology 58(5), 422–428 [required].
Hoffman, Diana. 2024. “Exploring the Extremes: The Impact of Radical Right-Wing Populism on Conspiracy Beliefs in Austria.” Social Sciences 13(10): 558 [required].
Jensen, Eric Allen, Axel Pfleger, Lisa Herbig, Brady Wagoner, Lars Lorenz, and Meike Watzlawik. 2021. “What Drives Belief in Vaccination Conspiracy Theories in Germany?” Frontiers in Communication 6: 678335 [required].
Cichocka Aleksandra, Marta Marchlewska, Agnieszka Golec de Zavala. 2016. “Does Self-Love or Self-Hate Predict Conspiracy Beliefs? Narcissism, Self-Esteem, and the Endorsement of Conspiracy Theories.” Social Psychological and Personality Science 7(2):157–166 [further reading].
Das, Santa Kumar, Abhinav Bhattarai, Kiran Paudel, Sandesh Bhusal, Sangam Shah, et al.
2024. “Socio-demographic Determinants of the Knowledge of Monkeypox Virus among the General Public: A Cross-Sectional Study in a Tertiary Care Center in Nepal.” BMC Infectious Diseases 24: 1-9 [further reading].
Gilkey, Melissa, William Calo, Macary Marciniak, and Noel Brewer. 2017. “Parents who Refuse or Delay HPV Vaccine: Differences in Vaccination Behavior, Beliefs, and Clinical Communication Preferences.” Human Vaccines & Immunotherapeutics 13(3): 680-686 [further reading].
Hoyt, Michael, Lisa Rubin, Carol Nemero, Joyce Lee, David Huebner, and Rae Jean Proeschold-Bell. 2012. “HIV/AIDS-Related Institutional Mistrust among Multiethnic Men who have Sex with Men: Effects on HIV Testing and Risk Behaviors.” Health Psychology 31: 269–277 [further reading].

Nimbi, Filippo Maria, Guido Giovanardi, Roberto Baiocco, Annalisa Tanzilli, and Vittorio Lingiardi. 2023. “Monkeypox: New Epidemic or Fake News? Study of
Psychological and Social Factors Associated wth Fake News Attitudes of Monkeypox in Italy.” Frontiers in Psychology 4:1093763 [further reading].
Paytubi, Sonia et al. 2022. “Everything Causes Cancer? Beliefs and Attitudes Towards Cancer Prevention among Anti-Vaxxers, Flat Earthers, and Reptilian Conspiracists:
Online Cross Sectional Survey.” British Medical Journal 379: e072561 [further reading].
Questions to consider:
What individual differences affect belief in anti-vaccination conspiracy theories?
We have read about conspiracy theory beliefs in different countries this week. Do you think there are country-specific influences, e.g., cultural influences, along with those at the individual-level?
Is there a relationship between beliefs in anti-vaccination conspiracy theories and political beliefs?

Week 9. Influences on Beliefs in Conspiracy Theories
Butter, Michael. 2020. “Conspiracy Theories in American History.” In Michael Butter and Peter Knight (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Conspiracy Theories [required].
Brunson, Emily. 2013. “The Impact of Social Networks on Parents’ Vaccination Decisions.” Pediatrics (2013) 131 (5): e1397–e1404 [required].
Pertwee, Ed, Clarissa Simas, and Heidi Larson. 2022. “An Epidemic of Uncertainty: Rumors,
Conspiracy Theories and Vaccine Hesitancy.” Nature Medicine 28: 456-459 [required].

Greve, Henrich, Hayagreeva Rao, Paul Vicinanza, and Echo Yan Zhou. 2022. “Online Conspiracy Groups: Micro-Bloggers, Bots, and Coronavirus Conspiracy Talk on Twitter.” American Sociological Review 87(6): 919-949 [further reading].
Schrader, Tanya, Daniel Jolley, Richard Jolley, and Sarah Krahenbuhl.2025. “Upholding Social Hierarchies: Social Dominance Orientation Moderates the Link Between (Intergroup) Conspiracy Exposure and Violent Extremism.” Group Processes & Intergroup Relations 28(2): 277-299 [further reading].
Questions to consider:
What lessons do you draw about contextual influences from the chapter “Conspiracy Theories in American History”?
What are social networks? Do they exert an independent influence on beliefs or do people just self-select into social networks?
What is the relationship between belief in anti-vaccine conspiracy theories and vaccine hesitancy? What is vaccine hesitancy and how prevalent do you think it is?

Week 10: The Role of the Global Information Age
Covolo, Loredana, Elisabetta Ceretti, Chiara Passeri, Michela Boletti and Umberto Gelatti.
2017. “What Arguments on Vaccinations run through YouTube Videos in Italy? A Content Analysis.” Human Vaccines & Immunotherapeutics 13(7): 1693-1699. [required]
Dunn, Adam, Didi Surian, Julie Leask, Aditi Dey, Kenneth Mandl, and Enrico Coiera. 2017. “Mapping Information Exposure on Social Media to Explain Differences in HPV Vaccine Coverage in the United States.” Vaccine 35: 3033-3040 [required].
Keelan, Jennifer Keelan, Vera Pavri-Garcia, George Tomlinson, and Kumanan Wilson. 2007. “YouTube as a Source of Information on Immunization: A Content Analysis.” JAMA 298(21):2482-2484. [required].

Stahl, J.-P., R. Cohen, F. Denis, J. Gaudelus, A. Martinot, T. Lery, and H. Lepetit. 2016. “The Impact of the Web and Social Networks on Vaccination. New Challenges and Opportunities Offered to Fight Against Vaccine Hesitancy.” Médecine et Maladies Infectieuses 46(3): 117-122 [required].
Stein, Richard. 2017. “The Golden Age of Anti-Vaccine Conspiracies.” GERMS 7(4): 168-170 [required].
Kata, Anna. 2012. “Anti-Vaccine Activists, Web 2.0, and the Postmodern Paradigm – An Overview of Tactics and Tropes Used Online by the Anti-Vaccination Movement.” Vaccine 30(25): 3778-3789 [further reading].
Rosu, Maria-Magdalena, Ana-Maria Cosmoiu, Rodica Ianole-Calin, and Sandra Cornoiu.
2024. “Stories Worth Sharing – Why do People Spread News Online?” Online Information Review 48(3): 581-600 [further reading].
Tangherlini, Timothy, Vwani Roychowdhury, Beth Glenn, Catherine Crespi, Roy Bandari, Akshay Wadia, Misagh Falahi, Ehsan Ebrahimzadeh, and Roshan Bastani. 2016. “’Mommy Blogs’ and the Vaccination Exemption Narrative: Results From A Machine-Learning Approach for Story Aggregation on Parenting Social Media Sites.” JMIR Public Health Surveillance 2(2): e166 [further reading].
Zenone, Marco, and Timothy Caulfield. 2022. “Using Data from a Short Video Social Media Platform to Identify Emergent Monkeypox Conspiracy Theories.” JAMA Network Open 5(1): e2236993 [further reading].

Questions to consider:
What role does social media play in the establishment and spread of anti-vaccine conspiracy theories?
Is YouTube’s influence on conspiracy theories just about the spread of information or are there other features of YouTube that make it particularly influential?
Is this a Golden Age of anti-vaccine conspiracy theories?

Part 5: Combating Conspiracy Theories

Week 11: Consequences of Conspiracy Theories
Jolley, Daniel, and Karen Douglas. 2014. “The Effects of Anti-Vaccine Conspiracy Theories on Vaccination Intentions.” PLoS ONE 9(2): e89177 [required].
Jolley, Daniel, Karen Douglas, Marta Marchlewska, Aleksandra Cichocka, and Robbie
Sutton. 2022. “Examining the Links between Conspiracy Beliefs and the EU ‘Brexit’ Referendum Vote in the UK: Evidence from a Two-Wave Survey.” Journal of Applied Social Psychology 52: 30-36 [required].
Maisonneuve, Herve, and Daniel Floret. 2012. “Wakefield’s Affair: 12 Years of Uncertainty Whereas no Link between Autism and MMR Vaccine has been Proved.” La Presse Medicale 41(9): 827-34 [required].
Oleksy, Tomasz, Anna Wnuk, Malgorzata Gambin, and Agnieszka Łyś. 2021. “Dynamic Relationships Between Different Types of Conspiracy Theories about COVID-19 and Protective Behaviour: A Four-Wave Panel Study in Poland.” Social Science & Medicine 280: 114028 [required].
Đorđević, Milošević J., S. Mari, M. Vdović, and A. Milošević. 2021. “Links between Conspiracy Beliefs, Vaccine Knowledge, and Trust: Anti-Vaccine Behavior of Serbian Adults.” Social Science & Medicine 277: 113930 [further reading].
Poland, Gregory, and Robert Jacobson. 2012. “The Clinician’s Guide to the Anti-Vaccinationists’ Galaxy.” Human Immunology 73(8): 859-866 [further reading].
Silva, Brunho Castanho, Federico Vegetti, and Levente Littvay. 2017. “The Elite is Up to Something: Exploring the Relationship Between Populism and Belief in Conspiracy Theories.” Swiss Political Science Review 23: 423–443 [further reading].

Swami, Viren, Rebecca Coles, Stefan Stieger, Jakob Pietschnig, Adrian Furnham, Sherry Rehim, Martin Voracek. 2011. “Conspiracist Ideation in Britain and Austria: Evidence of a Monological Belief System and Associations Between Individual Psychological Differences and Real-World and Fictitious Conspiracy Theories.” British Journal of Psychology 102(3): 443-463 [further reading].
Wood, Michael, Karen Douglas, and Robbie Sutton. 2012. “Dead and Alive: Beliefs in Contradictory Conspiracy Theories.” Social Psychological and Personality Science 3(6): 767-773 [further reading].

Questions to consider:
Should we care about anti-vaccine conspiracy theories or are their effects relatively benign?
Did anti-vaccine conspiracy theories hinder the response to Covid?
Are there political consequences of anti-vaccine conspiracy theories?

Week 12: Correcting Disinformation, Misinformation, and Malinformation
Begg, Norman, and Angus Nicoll. 1994. “Immunisation.” BMJ: British Medical Journal 309: 1073-1075 [required].
Bode, Leticia, and Emily Vraga. 2018. “See Something, Say Something: Correction of Global Health Misinformation on Social Media.” Health 33(9):1131–1140 [required].
Jacobson, Robert, Paul Targonskia, and Gregory Poland. 2007. “A Taxonomy of Reasoning Flaws in the Anti-Vaccine Movement.” Vaccine 25: 3146-3152 [required].
Nyhan, Brendan, Jason Reifler, Sean Richey, and Gary Freed. 2014. “Effective Messages in Vaccine Promotion: A Randomized Trial.” Pediatrics 133(4): e835-e842 [required].
Scheufele, Dietram, Nicole Krause, and Isabelle Freiling. 2021. “Misinformed about the ‘Infodemic?’ Science’s Ongoing Struggle with Misinformation.” Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition 10: 522–526 [required].

Di Pietro, Maria Luisa, Andrea Poscia, Adele Anna Teleman, Davide Maged, and Walter Ricciardi. 2017. “Vaccine Hesitancy: Parental, Professional and Public Responsibility.” Ann Ist Super Sanita 53:157–62 [further reading].
Colgrove, James. 2005. “’Science in a Democracy’: The Contested Status of Vaccination in the Progressive Era and the 1920s.” Isis 96: 167-191 [further reading].
Ecker, Ullrich, Stephen Lewandowsky, and David Tang. 2010. “Explicit Warnings Reduce but do not Eliminate the Continued Influence of Misinformation.” Memory & Cognition 38: 1087–1100 [further reading].
Kaufman, Martin. 1967. “The American Anti-Vaccinationists and their Arguments.” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 41: 463-478 [further reading].
Leask, Julie-Anne, and Simon Chapman. 1998. “’An Attempt to Swindle Nature’: Press Anti-Immunisation Reportage 1993-1997.” Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health 22(1): 17-26 [further reading].
Lewandowsky, Stephen, Ullrich Ecker, Colleen Seifert, Norbert Schwarz, and John Cook.
2012. “Misinformation and its Correction: Continued Influence and Successful Debiasing.” Psychological Science in the Public Interest 13 (3): 106–131 [further reading].

Questions to consider:
Do the readings this week mean that it is futile to try to correct misinformation?
From what you know about the United States, to what extent is the MAHA movement fueled by misinformation? Why is there not more opposition to it?
What tactics would you advise to combat anti-vaccine dis- and mis-information?

Teaching Assessment
This course will be assessed by a combination of:
Class participation (20%): asking questions (in-class or by email before class), answering questions in class, discussing readings.
Case study (1000 words) (20%): Students will be asked to write a short historical case study, drawing on academic sources, of a pre-internet vaccine conspiracy theory.
Essay (3000 words) (60 %): Students will be asked to write an essay in the form of a policy proposal for reforms designed to combat disinformation, using the history and psychology covered during the course as evidence.

Bibliography/Recommended Reading
Andrade, Gabriel. 2020. “Medical Conspiracy Theories: Cognitive Science and Implications for Ethics.” Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy 23(3): 505-518.
Aquino, Francesco, Gabriele Donzelli, Emanuela De Franco, Gaetano Privitera, Pier Luigi Lopalco, and Annalaura Carducci. 2017. “The Web and Public Confidence in MMR Vaccination in Italy.” Vaccine 35(B):4494–4498.
Brotherton, Rob. 2016. Suspicious Minds: Why We Believe Conspiracy Theories. London: Bloomsbury Sigma.
Carey John, Andrew Guess, Peter Loewen, Eric Merkley, Brendan Nyhan, Joseph Phillips, and Jason Reifler. 2022. “The Ephemeral Effects of Fact-Checks on COVID-19 Misperceptions: Evidence from the United States, Great Britain, and Canada.” Nature Human Behaviour 6: 236-243.
Covolo, Loredana, Elisabetta Ceretti, Chiara Passer, Michela Boletti, and Umberto Gelatti. 2017. “What Arguments on Vaccinations Run through YouTube videos in Italy? A Content Analysis.” Human Vaccines & Immunotherapeutics 13:1693–1699.
Grimes, David. 2016. “On the Viability of Conspiratorial Beliefs.” PloS One 11(3): e0151003.
Poland, Gregory, and Robert Jacobson. 2011. “The Age-Old Struggle against the Antivaccinationists.” New England Journal of Medicine 364:97–99.
Hellinger Daniel. 2019. “Conspiracy and Conspiracy Theories in the Ae of Trump.” In Michael Butler and Peter Knight (eds.), Routledge Handbook of Conspiracy Theories. London: Routledge.
Roisman Joseph. The Rhetoric of Conspiracy in Ancient Athens. Los Angeles: University of California Press; 2006.
Uscinski, Joseph (ed.). 2018. Conspiracy Theories and the People Who Believe Them. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Wood, Michael, Karen Douglas, and Robbie Sutton. 2012. “Dead and alive: Beliefs in Contradictory Conspiracy Theories.” Social Psychological and Personality Science 3(6): 767-773.

Last updated: June 19, 2026