When it comes to health, conspiracy theories are more widespread than one might think, and they affect how patients view and receive treatment, according to a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Researchers surveyed 1,351 adults in an online survey administered between August and September 2013. According to the study survey, 49 percent of Americans believe in a health conspiracy, though some conspiracies are more prevalent than others. The conspiracy theories are listed below in order of the percentage of study participants who had heard the theory before seeing it on the survey:
- 69 percent — Doctors know routine vaccines cause autism (20 percent agree, 44 percent disagree, 36 percent neither)
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- 63 percent — U.S. regulators are actively preventing the public from getting natural cures because of pressure from pharmaceutical companies (37 percent agree, 32 percent disagree, 31 percent neutral)
- 57 percent — Federal health officials know cell phones cause cancer but have taken no action because large corporations won't allow it (20 percent agree, 40 percent disagree, 40 percent neutral).
- 32 percent — The Central Intelligence Agency infected African Americans with HIV under the guise of a vaccination program (12 percent agree, 51 percent disagree, 37 percent neutral).
- 25 percent — Adding fluoride to water is a cover for allowing companies to dump phosphate mining byproducts (12 percent agree, 46 percent disagree, 41 percent neutral).
- 19 percent — Genetic organisms are being used to shrink the world's population in a secret program called Agenda 21, sponsored by the Rockefeller and Ford foundations (12 percent agree, 42 percent disagree, 46 percent neutral).
The lead study author, J. Eric Oliver, PhD, noted that rather than dismissing patients who believe in health conspiracies, a more useful course of action would be to recognize such patients may be less likely to follow evidence-based treatment guidelines.
"It's important to increase information about health and science to the public. I think scientific thinking is not a very intuitive way to see the world. For people who don't have a lot of education, it's relatively easy to reject the scientific way of thinking about things," he said to Reuters.
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