Each side in the global warming debate has accused the other of ulterior motives and of being part of a conspiracy to advance a hidden agenda.

Many people believe that historic or present-day events are the work of conspiracies. Some conspiracy theories claim that specific groups are secretly working to control society. Other theories claim that major historical events were plotted by conspiracies. Finally, many people claim that unorthodox ideas, such as revolutionary inventions or medical cures, are suppressed by entrenched vested interests, although they may not identify any specific people or groups as responsible. In general, any belief that there are secret, organized efforts working behind the scenes to manipulate events can be termed a conspiracy theory.

There have been real conspiracies in history, such as the plot to assassinate President Abraham Lincoln, and there are real conspiracies today, such as criminal cartels and terrorist movements. In order for a conspiracy theory to be valid, a first requirement must be that the goals of the covert group be unethical or criminal. Someone who is prosecuted for selling a worthless medical remedy may claim that he is the victim of a conspiracy between the medical establishment and the government, but removing worthless remedies from the market is a legitimate goal. The efforts during World War II to keep the American landing at Normandy and the atomic bomb project secret involved large organizations acting secretly, but their objectives were legitimate. Not all secret movements are conspiracies.

Most important, for a theory to be valid, the conspiracy it describes must exist in reality. It is very hard to prove the existence of a conspiracy, unless its cloak of secrecy is removed. It may be infiltrated by law enforcement, be betrayed by a member, or be defeated and its secrets revealed. Most believers in a given conspiracy claim that the conspiracy is ongoing and therefore secret. They resort to indirect arguments in support of their theories, pointing to unusual coincidences, reasons why certain people might benefit from a conspiracy, and unanswered questions about events as evidence of their beliefs. While those lines of evidence might be consistent with a conspiracy, they are not sufficient to prove the existence of the conspiracy.

Some climate change skeptics have claimed that the idea of global climate change is part of a movement to destroy capitalism and personal freedom. Climate change activists, by contrast, claim that many skeptics are allied with front groups funded by industry or political movements. The climate change controversy is a good example of why conspiracy theories have no place in science.

In any debate, the only relevant question is whether ideas are true or false. The overriding issue in the climate change controversy is whether or not human activities are changing the climate in a dangerous fashion. The fact that someone has a personal motivation, or a hidden agenda, for supporting or opposing an idea does not make the idea true or false. This is an example of a fallacy called a non sequitur. The fact that many supporters of climate change hold liberal political beliefs and many opponents have ties to industry proves nothing about the correctness of their ideas. Merely calling something a conspiracy does not make it one.

Many people use conspiracy accusations to imply that their opponents are unethical or wrong or use conspiracy theories to explain why others reject their ideas. This is a fallacy known as an ad hominem argument. Criticism or opposition, by themselves, do not constitute a conspiracy. If an idea is generally rejected by the scientific community, that is evidence that the theory is wrong, not that scientists are conspiring against it.

There are real conspiracies in the world, so the mere fact that someone believes in a conspiracy does not make the person wrong. However, using a conspiracy argument to justify a belief commits several logical fallacies. Conspiracy allegations show that the person making them uses faulty logic. It is not logically correct to dismiss conspiracy beliefs as automatically wrong, but it is legitimate to reject them as evidence and to insist that the person using them debate ideas on their own merits rather than resorting to conspiracy claims. It is never legitimate to use conspiracy arguments to justify the acceptance or rejection of an idea.

In scientific debates, the only relevant issue is whether ideas are right or wrong. Using the idea of a conspiracy to discredit a position is a logical fallacy and, worse yet, poisons the climate of debate. For example, the title of Al Gore's celebrated documentary An Inconvenient Truth (2006) hints that critics of global warming are motivated not by the scientific data but by personal motives. Likewise, the name of the skeptic organization, Cooler Heads Coalition, implies that their opponents are acting irrationally and rashly. Knowing that someone has a personal motivation for a belief can certainly justify giving the person's arguments very close scrutiny, but it never constitutes scientific evidence.

Biliography:

1)         Hofstadter, Richard. The Paranoid Style in American Politics, and Other Essays. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1996.

2)         Jameson, Fredric. "Totality as Conspiracy." In The Geopolitical Aesthetic: Cinema and Space in the World System. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995.

3)         Newton, Michael. The Encyclopedia of Conspiracies and Conspiracy Theories. New York: Facts On File, 2006.

4)         Parish, Jane, and Martin Parker, eds. The Age of Anxiety: Conspiracy Theory and the Human Sciences. Oxford, England: Blackwell, 2001.

5)         Pipes, Daniel. Conspiracy: How the Paranoid Style Flourishes and Where It Comes From. New York: Free Press, 1997.

6)         Roeper, Richard. Debunked! Conspiracy Theories, Urban Legends, and Evil Plots of the Twenty-first Century. Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 2008.

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