Harambam, Jaron, and Stef Aupers. "Contesting Epistemic Authority: Conspiracy theories on the boundaries of science". Public Understanding of Science, Vol.24, No.4 (2015): 466-480.

Harambam, Jaron, and Stef Aupers. "Contesting Epistemic Authority: Conspiracy theories on the boundaries of science". Public Understanding of Science, Vol.24, No.4 (2015): 466-480.

• The authors claim that conspiracy theories have become increasingly popular in the 21st Century, with more of the population questioning official narratives and engage in belief in conspiracy theories (466-467).
• Most academic accounts of conspiracy theories attempt to create a distinction between the 'rational' conventional explanation of events and the 'irrational' conspiracy theory. This has become especially prominent in post-modern societies, as truth becomes seen as subjective. Dismissal of conspiracy has adapted to focus increasingly on their 'irrationality', including categorization with religion and other 'unscientific' beliefs (467-468).
• Some scholars have also blamed conspiracy theories for the very disintegration of dichotomies between truth and fiction in postmodern society by casting public doubt on scientific reason (468-469).
• This fight over authority and legitimate claims to the truth exists due to a turf war between conventional scientists and conspiracy theories. Conspiracy theories wish to be recognized as legitimate, while conventional scientists have increasingly emphasized the distinctions between themselves and conspiracy theorists to marginalize the latter (469).
• A survey of conspiracy theorists in the Netherlands demonstrates both the remarkable demographic diversity of believers and the consistency of views. All participants had a deep distrust of current institutions and were politically engaged in reading official accounts and constructing, with others, alternative conspiratorial accounts. Many took political action they believed would help subvert the conspiracy (470-471).
• Conspiracy theorists are extremely skeptical and refuse to accept the legitimate of scholarly or scientific knowledge, instead demanding thorough explanations from so-called experts. They are particularly critical of the tendency of experts to reject certain beliefs without due consideration or testing, which undermines expert legitimacy in the eyes of the conspiracy theorist (471).
• "Respondents in the conspiracy milieu argue that the ideal of objectivity is highly problematic: scientific 'facts' are not so much 'discovered' but 'constructed', and this knowledge production is intimately related to political power and economic interests" (474).
• Conspiracy theorists are particularly critical of which institutions decide that certain forms of knowledge are legitimate and which are illegitimate. They often combine a strong belief in scientific inquiry with a distrust of the accredited institutions or experts conventionally undertaking that inquiry (475).
• Contrary to the claims of those rejecting or dismissing conspiracy theorists, conspiracy theorists are not opposed to science, they are only opposed to present scientific authorities which they see as using their privileged position to suppress and delegitimize knowledge they disagree with (476-477).