“The doctors lied”, Trump tweeted in 2014. Demotix/Andy Katz. All rights reserved.When it comes to public health, suspicions about medical science can do a lot of damage. Deciding not to vaccinate our children, or to ignore public health messages designed to combat epidemics, can have devastating effects on family and fellow citizens. Investigating why such suspicions arise and may even become conspiracy theories is vital in creating strategies to change dissenters’ minds.
As I listened to historian Stephen Mawdsley, a research fellow at Cambridge University and speaker at the CRASSH conference, Suspect Science, describe conspiracy theories about a polio vaccination programme in America in the late 1950s, I was struck by how similar they were to concerns about vaccinations and drug therapies today: the trials of the vaccine were too large to replicate (and therefore verify); they took place behind closed doors; the figures were manipulated; the ingredients were unsafe and the vaccine could be contaminated.
