Conspiracy Theories

The enormity of the general literature

"Handbooks, etc."

Kate Tucket, ed., Conspiracy Theories. Berkley Books, NY, 2005.

Michael Newton, Handbook of Conspiracy Theories. Facts on File, Inc. 2006

John Grant, Denying Science: Conspiracy Theories, Media Distortions and the War Against Reality. Prometheus, 2011

James McConnachie & Robin Tudge, The Rough Guide to Conspiracy Theories. 2013.

and now something more academically respectable

Michael Butter and Peter Knight, eds., Routledge Handbook of Conspiracy Theories. Routledge, 2020.

and of course

Wikipedia, List of Conspiracy Theories

COVID-19 conspiracy theories

Bill Gates, Vaccines, Implanted Microchips

Reported in Nature, May 28, 2020, "Battling the Infodemic"

The original BioHackinginfo.com page
https://biohackinfo.com/news-bill-gates-id2020-vaccine-implant-covid-19-digital-certificates/
as it appears July 31, 2020: pdf

Snopes debunking. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/bill-gates-id2020/ pdf

But there there's
"Bill Gates will use your microchipped body to mine cryptocurrency"
https://biohackinfo.com/news-microsoft-patent-wo2020060606-human-biometrics-crypto-mining/
at July 31, 2020: pdf

More...
Wikipedia has roughly 100 pages of
"Misinformation related to the COVID-19 pandemic"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misinformation_related_to_the_COVID-19_pandemic
at july 31, 2020: pdf

The philosophy literature is small

David Coady, ed., Conspiracy Theories: the Philosophical Debate. Ashgate, 2006.

Matthew Dentith, The Philosophy of Conspiracy Theories. Palgrave MacMillan, 2014.

Marc Pauly, Conspiracy Theories, Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Analyses of the Pathology

Psychological

Belief in conspiracy theories is the result of mental aberrations.
Michael J. Wood et al., "Dead and Alive: Beliefs in Contradictory Conspiracy Theories", Social Psychological and Personality Science 3(6)(2012) 767-773

Sociological/Political

Group identification drives beliefs.
Dan M. Kahan, "The Politically Motivated Reasoning Paradigm, Part 1: What Politically Motivated Reasoning Is and How to Measure It," Emerging Trends in the Social and Behavioral Sciences. Eds. Robert Scott and Stephen Kosslyn. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 2016

Philosophical

Diagnosis 1.

Conspiracy theories are defective because of a structural defect in all conspiracy theories.
Brian L. Keely, "Of Conspiracy Theories," The Journal of Philosophy, 96, No. 3. (Mar., 1999), pp. 109-126.

Are conspiracy theories are structurally identifiable by a computer algorithm?
Timothy R. Tangherlini, "An automated pipeline for the discovery of conspiracy and conspiracy theory narrative frameworks: Bridgegate, Pizzagate and storytelling on the web". PLoS ONE 15(6): e0233879

Diagnosis 2.

Conspiracy theories systematically misconstrue evidence
Brian L. Keely, "Of Conspiracy Theories," The Journal of Philosophy, 96, No. 3. (Mar., 1999), pp. 109-126.

Diagnosis 3.

There is no problem generically with conspiracy theories. Some a pathological. Some are not. They should be treated on a case by case basis.
Matthew R. X. Dentith, "When inferring to a conspiracy might be the best explanation," Preprint for Social Epistemology, 2016.