I've been a space nerd since the launch of Sputnik in 1957. So I have a pretty good understanding of what's real in the space program and what's not (no, Stanley Kubrick did not film the Apollo moon landings on a backlot) and astronomy (no, Mars is not suddenly going to appear as big as the moon). Generally, I haven't paid that much attention to space-related disinformation, writing it off as plain silliness.
But it does have a dark side, as this interview with cosmologist Katie Mack points out.
Q: On the face of it, this seems frustrating, but not necessarily as troubling as health misinformation.
A: The way it goes is that you see something that’s false and you believe it. Right? Some physics or astronomy thing that is false, but for whatever reason you think it’s true. And then you discover that it’s not an accepted idea. All the experts say it’s wrong. And then at that point, either you accept what the experts say, or—if you still think that thing is true—then the experts are lying. And if the experts are lying, then that leads you directly to the conspiracies, right? Because you have to say, what else are they lying about? Why are they lying? Who are these people running the show?
That’s what happens with things like the flat Earth conspiracy, which is not something you can believe in if you don’t believe that everybody involved in the space community is a liar. And if they’re lying, they must be coordinated by some high-up conspiracy, and then that leads into all of the other conspiracies that require some kind of global leader. Once you dig down into it, they all kind of look the same. They all get you to paranoid conspiracies, anti-Semitism, “the elites are holding us down” … that kind of thing.
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