Conspiracy Theories – May 6

As an old adage (mistakenly attributed to Confucius) notes, it’s difficult to find a black cat in a dark room, especially when there is no cat. Conspiracy theories have long been prevalent in the United States, but today they seem to be especially popular — from politics to popular culture — particularly on social media. In the spirit of another adage, "even paranoids have enemies": there are real conspiracies, and some of them are important and even dangerous. How do we distinguish the real conspiracies from the tinfoil-hat ones?

Our speaker, Dr. Eugenie Scott, is former executive director of the National Center for Science Education. She is an internationally-known expert on science denialism and the creationism/evolution controversy. Dr. Scott has won numerous awards from scientific and educational institutions, including ten honorary doctoral degrees.