Counterknowledge

Random crackpot conspiracy theories have been around for ages. We all have our favourites such as insisting that JFK was assassinated by more than the lone gunman but instead fatally shot by a mysterious shooter on the grassy knoll (either way, there is no disputing that he ended up quite dead) . Indeed, if one were to be completely spurious about it, I wouldn't be surprised to find that more Americans believe in the existence of UFOs than the theory of evolution.

Damian Thompson takes direct aim at some of the more nonsensical recent crackpot theories in his book on Counterknowledge subtitled "how we have surrendered ourselves to conspiracy theories, quack medicine, bogus science and fake history". These might make rather easy targets, but Thompson argues that their influence has grown rather perniciously. Indeed, counterknowledge which he defines as "misinformation packaged to look like fact" has gone from being at the fringe of society to having spread to the mainstream. UFOs are a classic example of this, but the list now encompasses such unfounded scares and unabashed rubbish as a 9/11 being an American-Israeli conspiracy, MMR immunization causing autism, quack nutritionism, alternative treatments in general, particularly for HIV/AIDS, creationism, and such meta-historical nonsense as Jesus fathering a child, China 'discovering' America and the holocaust never occuring.

As he notes, one of the paradoxes of our age is that while "our techniques for evaluating evidence are subtler than before..... counterknowledge is corrupting intellectual standards". It must be said that he does skirt around the more intellectually interesting question of why this might be the case. Mention is made, obviously, of the internet, and the information revolution which has increased the "privatization of knowledge" and has made everyone an expert. He also delves into Sociology arguing that modernity leads to the "dismantling of authority structures" and our dedication to what Anthony Giddens calls the "reflexive project of the self". Still, more interesting analysis on this paradox of more easily available knowledge leading to the growth of so-called counterknowledge would have been welcome.

Where Thompson does succeed well is gleefully deflating some of these crackpot theories. He does this with gleeful abandon and not inconsiderable wit. He delights in showing the intellectual bankruptness of such quack cures as homeopathy, craniosacral therapy and other so called 'alternative' medicines. More scarily, he shows how some of those remedies are now marketed officially in high street stores such as Boots, or worse how homeopathy is available as a treatment from the NHS and as a degree course at the University of Westminster. Nutritionism, or rather those who abuse the label also comes under fire from him, and his cynicism is amply justified when we consider that (Dr.) Gillian McKeith actually earned her Phd from a non-accredited American University on the basis of a correspondence course. Worse still is the case of Patrick Holford, a 'nutritionist' whose degree in psychology better explains his blatant attempts to market quack products like a 'crystal' which will protect one from allegedly harmful electromagnetic radiation emanating from mobile phone towers.

Ours has been labelled the information age with good reason: advances in technology has allowed us almost instant access to unlimited information. But as Damian Thompson has pointed out, this has also led to the pernicious spread of misinformation. We might shrug off mass mails about HIV infected needles being left on train seats in order to infect people (the virus can't survive any length of time openly exposed), but it is more scary for society at large when this extends to autism scares over MMR jabs, cancer scares over cellphone antennaes and the belief that China discovered America in 1421 (and Europe in 1431 too apparently).