The Phenomenology of Paranoia

[W. Niederhut]

          The U.S. government is, apparently, concerned about "conspiracy theorists"-- a term that does not describe a meaningful psychiatric phenotype.

          This vague rubric of "conspiracy theorist," apparently applies to anyone who believes that governments and their national intelligence agencies may conspire to achieve political and military ends-- historians, scientists, attorneys, etc.-- as well as uneducated, delusional people who believe that the Earth is flat.

         "Scientific" studies referred to by the new anti-conspiracy theory Thought Police have, allegedly, shown that "conspiracy theorists" are "paranoid."

          But what is "paranoia?"  I am not an expert in the history of the so-called U.S. "Deep State," but I know a great deal about the phenomenology of "paranoia."  In my 35 year career as an American psychiatrist, I have observed and studied paranoia on a regular basis.

         Paranoia is fear that is not based in reality.  The term was originally used by the 19th century psychiatrist Emil Kraepelin-- the "Godfather" of the modern psychiatric DSM-- to describe a mental disorder that he called "Systematized Paranoia."  In modern DSM parlance, it is called "Delusional Disorder," an illness in which people suffer from chronic delusional fear, without experiencing hallucinations.

        Other common mental disorders associated with paranoia are paranoid schizophrenia and mood disorders (both unipolar and bipolar) with psychotic features.  Another common cause of paranoia is stimulant intoxication by amphetamine-like substances, including cocaine.

        Historians, scientists, and other scholars who have studied and written about various deceptive government-sponsored narratives are not "paranoid" in any meaningful sense of the word.   Skepticism, per se, is not "paranoia," if it is based on accurate perceptions of reality.

        Anyone who claims that it is-- in pop psychology articles or "scientific" studies-- simply doesn't understand the definition and phenomenology of paranoia.

        This kind of intellectual fraudulence in the U.S. today appears to be a poorly conceived government approach to Thought Policing people who think about government narratives propagated in our modern mass media.

[Robert Harper]

5 minutes ago, W. Niederhut said:

Skepticism, per se, is not "paranoia," if it is based on accurate perceptions of reality.

Thank the Lord for common sense. The use of the term "conspiracy theorist" was, like the use of the term "buff" to describe JFK skeptics, invented by the CIA as a form of mind control. Give the people who can't think for themselves something that they can use to discredit others who question their understanding of truth.

[Ron Ecker]

The CIA has feared for half a century that assassination researchers are out to get it. Hence a never-ending cover-up. But cover-up of what exactly? What researchers are out to get is the truth. So what is the CIA afraid of? Is its fear based in reality? 

 

 

  

[David Andrews]

Linguistically, you could define paranoia as knowledge that stands beside/apart from standard knowledge, so a kind of occulted knowledge.  Which, of course, might make some people feel threatened for knowing...

Edited August 9, 2019 by David Andrews

[Guest]

Our Harvard-trained psychiatrist is badly out of date.  NONE of the recent research (and certainly none that I have cited) suggests that the personality type who is drawn to conspiracy thinking is necessarily paranoid or suffering from any pathological disorder.  The precise opposite is true.

Historian Richard Hofstadter wrote an influential 1966 essay, “The Paranoid Style in American Politics,” in which he coined the phrase “paranoid style” to describe the use of 
conspiratorial narratives to frame political issues, influence public opinion and control public discourse. Hofstadter’s equation of conspiracy theory and conspiratorial thinking in politics with the psychological pathology of paranoia led many academics to assume that those who believe in conspiracy theories must suffer from excessive anxiety, fear, delusion, irrationality, and inability to cognitively grasp the complexity of social, cultural, and political tensions that converge to create unusual historical events.

Scientific research has moved far away from Hofstadter's simplistic view and has taken a much more nuanced approach in an effort to identify what factors really do cause some people to embrace conspiracy theorizing even at the expense of evidence, common sense and logic.  The personality profile that has emerged, while distinct, is not inherently pathological or clinically paranoid.  For example, see "How paranoid are conspiracy believers? Toward a more fine‐grained understanding of the connect and disconnect between paranoia and belief in conspiracy theories" published in the  European Journal of Social Psychology, https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/ejsp.2494.

Consistent with conspiracy thinking, Mr. Niederhut would have you believe that the entire field of scientific research into conspiracy thinking, which comprises every continent and numerous scientific disciplines, is some sort of CIA plot to discredit 9/11 Truthers and their ilk.  That's right, scientific research into conspiracy thinking is - wait for it - itself a conspiracy!  If you're so far gone that you're ready to buy into that, I have nothing to offer you but my condolences.

I challenge you to read this introduction from "Belief in conspiracy theories: Basic principles of an emerging research domain," published in 2018, likewise in the European Journal of Social Psychology, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6282974/.  Please, accept the challenge - you can read this in 45 seconds.  You tell me whether this sounds like the sort of CIA "paranoia plot" Mr. Niederhut postulates.  If it does - please, be my guest, keep drinking the Kool Aid of Mr. Niederhut's posts.

Early studies on conspiracy theories relied mostly on correlational evidence in cross‐sectional designs (e.g., Abalakina‐Paap, Stephan, Craig, & Gregory, 1999; Goertzel, 1994), or studied conspiracy thinking as a function of demographic variables such as political party affiliation (Wright & Arbuthnot, 1974) or ethnicity (Crocker, Luhtanen, Broadnax, & Blaine, 1999). Although scarce and methodologically limited, these early studies provided two key insights that laid the foundations for current research on conspiracy theories. The first key insight is that although conspiracy theories differ widely in content, subjective beliefs in them are rooted in the same underlying psychology. This insight is suggested by findings that the single best predictor of belief in one conspiracy theory is belief in a different conspiracy theory (Goertzel, 1994; see also Lewandowski, Oberauer, & Gignac, 2013; Swami et al., 2011; Sutton & Douglas, 2014). Even beliefs in mutually incompatible conspiracy theories are positively correlated (e.g., Princess Diana was murdered vs. Princess Diana staged her own death; Wood, Douglas, & Sutton, 2012). While many conceptually distinct conspiracy theories exist, the tendency to believe in them appears to be underpinned by broader beliefs that support conspiracy theories in general (e.g., beliefs in cover ups; Wood et al., 2012). Some scholars argue for a conspiracy mindset as a relatively stable predisposition to believe in conspiracy theories that varies between persons (Imhoff & Bruder, 2014). Despite the high variability in conspiracy theories—involving topics that range from climate change to chronic illnesses to terrorist attacks—research demonstrates that largely similar and predictable psychological processes drive people's belief in them.

The second key insight is that besides individual differences, belief in conspiracy theories is highly sensitive to social context. For instance, ideological motivations influence political conspiracy beliefs depending on election results (e.g., Democrats believe governmental conspiracy theories particularly if there is a Republican in the White House, and vice versa; Wright & Arbuthnot, 1974; see also Golec de Zavala & Federico, 2018; Uscinski & Parent, 2014; Van Bavel & Pereira, 2018). Moreover, throughout history people have believed conspiracy theories particularly in impactful societal crisis situations, such as during fires, floods, earthquakes, rapid societal change, violence, and wars (McCauley & Jacques, 1979; see also Van Prooijen & Douglas, 2017). Finally, social structures that shape citizens’ feelings of vulnerability increase belief in conspiracy theories, as reflected in findings that feelings of powerlessness predict conspiracy beliefs (Abalakina‐Paap et al., 1999; Imhoff & Bruder, 2014), and that conspiracy beliefs are high particularly among members of stigmatized minority groups (Crocker et al., 1999; Davis, Wetherell, & Henry, 2018; Van Prooijen, Staman, & Krouwel, in press).

Recent research has drawn heavily on these two key insights, by extensively testing how stable individual differences predict a tendency to believe conspiracy theories (Darwin, Neave, & Holmes, 2011; Imhoff & Bruder, 2014; Swami et al., 2011; Van Prooijen, 2017), what causal factors increase belief in conspiracy theories (e.g., Douglas & Sutton, 2011; Van Prooijen & Van Dijk, 2014; Whitson & Galinsky, 2008), what basic cognitive processes are involved when people perceive conspiracies (Douglas, Sutton, Callan, Dawtry, & Harvey, 2016; Van Prooijen, Douglas, & De Inocencio, 2018), and what the consequences are of believing conspiracy theories (Bartlett & Miller, 2010; Douglas & Leite, 2017; Jolley & Douglas, 2014a,b). It is safe to say that the scientific study of conspiracy theories has been emerging over the past decade: Both the body of knowledge on this phenomenon, as well as the number of researchers actively working on it, has expanded rapidly.

One limitation of the current state of affairs in the scientific research domain of conspiracy theories, however, is that the field is lacking a solid theoretical framework that contextualizes previous findings, that enables novel predictions, and that suggests interventions to reduce the prevalence of conspiracy theories in society. Recent review articles have sought to address this limitation by providing a framework that illuminates the motivational basis of conspiracy theories—specifically that conspiracy theories appeal to people for epistemic, existential and social motivational reasons (Douglas et al., 2017), and by developing an evolutionary model—the Adaptive Conspiracism Hypothesis—that specifies how the human tendency to believe conspiracy theories evolved through natural selection (Van Prooijen & Van Vugt, in press). These initiatives notwithstanding, at present the field of conspiracy theories is still in its infancy in terms of theory development. To stimulate further theorizing, we propose four basic principles of belief in conspiracy theories that we distilled from research conducted so far. These four basic principles are supported by many studies and, in conjunction with existing models, may provide an organizing framework for researchers to develop more sophisticated theories and research on this phenomenon.

[Robert Harper]

WN- The above mouthful from a guy who dumped on the site and then said "adios."  Remember Henry Fonda's line in Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West about a guy who wore suspenders and a belt--"How can you trust a guy who doesn't trust his own pants." In this case, it's "his own mouth."

[W. Niederhut]

2 minutes ago, Robert Harper said:

WN- The above mouthful from a guy who dumped on the site and then said "adios."  Remember Henry Fonda's line in Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West about a guy who wore suspenders and a belt--"How can you trust a guy who doesn't trust his own pants." In this case, it's "his own mouth."

Yes, but I just violated my decision to stop reading Lance Pay-out's posts.

If you look at LP's so-called, "scientific" reference paper (above) about "conspiracy theories," one of the first truly hilarious claims it makes is that, "most conspiracy theories" (about organizations conspiring to carry out malevolent actions) have turned out to be false!  And guess which "scientist" wrote that one-- Daniel Pipes!

But it gets worse... The next "scientist" referenced in the LP  paper is none other than Cass Susstein, himself -- the political animal who pioneered the concept of hiring "cognitive infiltrators" to manipulate narratives about government ops on U.S. social media!

At least this ridiculous, "scientific" Lance Payette paper made a half-hearted attempt to define "conspiracy theorist" for their "analysis."  A CT is, apparently, a person who believes that powerful organizations may conspire to achieve malevolent ends.  In other words, a historian!

[Guest]

2 hours ago, W. Niederhut said:

Yes, but I just violated my decision to stop reading Lance Pay-out's posts.

If you look at LP's so-called, "scientific" reference paper (above) about "conspiracy theories," one of the first truly hilarious claims it makes is that, "most conspiracy theories" (about organizations conspiring to carry out malevolent actions) have turned out to be false!  And guess which "scientist" wrote that one-- Daniel Pipes!

But it gets worse... The next "scientist" referenced in the LP  paper is none other than Cass Susstein, himself -- the political animal who pioneered the concept of hiring "cognitive infiltrators" to manipulate narratives about government ops on U.S. social media!

At least this ridiculous, "scientific" Lance Payette paper made a half-hearted attempt to define "conspiracy theorist" for their "analysis."  A CT is, apparently, a person who believes that powerful organizations may conspire to achieve malevolent ends.  In other words, a historian!

Well, let's see:

The first paper I cited is by Dr. Roland Imhoff, who holds a Professorship for Social and Legal Psychology at the Psychological Institute of the Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz, Germany.  See https://www.soclegpsy.uni-mainz.de/prof-dr-roland-imhoff/.

The second paper I cited is by Dr. Jan-Willem van Prooijen, Associate Professor in Social and Organizational Psychology, VU Amsterdam, Holland.  See http://www.janwillemvanprooijen.com/.  His coauthor is Dr. Karen M. Douglas, Professor of Social Psychology, School of Psychology, University of Kent, England.  Her "primary research focus is on beliefs in conspiracy theories."

In an effort to discredit the above paper, which was published in the peer-reviewed European Journal of Social Psychology (https://www.easp.eu/publications/ejsp/?), NiederNut read so far as the first introductory paragraph.  There he encountered citations to a book by Daniel Pipes for the unremarkable proposition "In fact, conspiracy theories sometimes turn out to be true (e.g., Watergate; incidents of corporate corruption), although the vast majority of conspiracy theories that citizens have believed throughout history have been false."  I have not read Pipes' book and know nothing about him, but even his critics are far from dismissive.  See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Pipes.

NiederNut also encountered a citation to sources for the unremarkable proposition "accumulating evidence reveals that conspiracy theories are common among surprisingly large numbers of citizens."  The works cited are Oliver J. E., & Wood T. (2014), "Medical conspiracy theories and health behaviors in the United States," JAMA Internal Medicine, 174, 817–818, and Sunstein C. R., & Vermeule A. (2009), "Conspiracy theories: Causes and cures," The Journal of Political Philosophy, 17, 202–227.

Sunstein, whom NiederNut misidentifies as "Susstein," is an American legal scholar.  He was a professor of law at the University of Chicago for 27 years, the U of C being one of the truly premier law schools in the nation.  According to Wikipedia, "Studies of legal publications between 2009 and 2013 found Sunstein to be the most frequently cited American legal scholar by a wide margin.  In 2018, the Holberg Prize committee said, he 'reshaped our understanding of the relationship between the modern regulatory state and constitutional law. He is widely regarded as the leading scholar of administrative law in the U.S., and he is by far the most cited legal scholar in the United States and probably the world.'"  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cass_Sunstein

On the basis of these two introductory citations, which he finds "hilarious," NiederNut dismisses the entire paper as "ridiculous."

Are you sure you want to keep paying attention to this guy?

I'm just a layman, but I might suggest (in laymen's terms, mind you) that NiederNut is "desperate" because he's getting his butt kicked in public.  I might even uncharitably suggest that he's "losing it," but what do I know?  You be the judge.

Edited August 9, 2019 by Guest

[W. Niederhut]

These are political "science" papers, not science.

Daniel Pipes is a notorious, Neocon buglioser.

Cass Sunstein is a lawyer -- not a scientist-- who is the Godfather of U.S.  government-funded "infiltrators" (propagandists) in the social media.  Big brothers who watch American intellectuals who commit Thought Crimes.

Sunstein has been especially keen to undermine scientists and historians who have successfully debunked the official U.S. government narrative about the 9/11 op.

(I misspelled Sunstein's name, and wanted to correct the typo, but it would have required re-posting the entire post above. Big deal.)

[Guest]

1 minute ago, W. Niederhut said:

These are political "science" papers, not science.

Daniel Pipes is a notorious, Neocon buglioser.

Cass Sunstein is a lawyer -- not a scientist-- who is the Godfather of U.S.  government-funded "infiltrators" (propagandists) in the social media.  Big brothers who watch American intellectuals who commit Thought Crimes.

Sunstein has been especially keen to undermine scientists and historians who have successfully debunked the official U.S. government narrative about the 9/11 op.

(I misspelled Sunstein's name, and wanted to correct the typo, but it would have required re-posting the entire post above. Big deal.)

You're not reading my posts anymore - remember?

Precisely what does it matter who Pipes and Sunstein are when their works are cited for innocuous propositions in the introduction to the peer-reviewed paper?  I happen to believe that psychiatry is the very definition of "voodoo science," but it is a science.  Part of my job, on a rotating basis with other attorneys, was to handle the involuntary commitment of people with serious mental disorders who were deemed a danger to themselves or others.  Every case required the testimony of two psychiatrists.  The attorneys were in agreement that the psychiatrists were collectively as nutty as the patients.  We used to joke about it all the time.

Psychology, sociology and other behavioral sciences are likewise sciences.  Those who practice in these fields approach their studies in an objective, rational, and systematic manner.  The European Journal of Social Psychology and the other journals in which such work is being published are not "political science" journals.  Abnormal psychology cuts across all of the behavioral sciences, but not political science.  Good Lord.

Carry on - I've made my points.

[Guest]

Wait, you want psychiatry and conspiracy thinking?  How about the journal Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology?  How about Daniel Freeman, Professor of Clinical Psychology at the Department of Psychiatry, Medical Sciences Division, University of Oxford, England?  See https://www.psych.ox.ac.uk/team/daniel-freeman.  Will he do?  In 2017, he co-authored "The concomitants of conspiracy concerns," https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5423964/.  I quote:

A conspiracy world view may be a form of mistrust that is typically corrosive to individual and societal well-being. Our aim was to establish the correlates of conspiracy thinking in an epidemiologically representative sample.

1618 people (weighted 26.7%) endorsed the conspiracy belief item. These individuals were more likely to be: male; currently unmarried; less educated; in a lower income household; outside the labour force; from an ethnic minority group; not attending religious services; taking a weapon outside; and perceiving themselves as of lower social standing compared to others. Individuals endorsing the conspiracy belief item had lower levels of physical and psychological well-being, higher levels of suicidal ideation, weaker social networks, less secure attachment style, difficult childhood family experiences, and were more likely to meet criteria for a psychiatric disorder. There were no differences between those who endorsed conspiracy beliefs and those who did not in age, importance of religious beliefs in daily life, body mass index, or in having a gun at home.

Viewing conspiracies in the world is associated with a raised risk of a wide range of adverse circumstances. It is a type of cognitive style that requires systematic empirical study, including monitoring of prevalence, tests of causation, and modelling of propagation.

Read it - it's really quite interesting.  Not what you want to hear, but quite interesting - and it ain't "political science," booby.

You'll hate this part:

Our interest is in ‘false conspiracy theories’ , of which there are many. These include, for example, world conspiracies (e.g., concerning Jews, a new world order, aliens), event conspiracies (e.g., concerning UFOs, moon landings, 9/11), technology conspiracies (e.g., about surveillance, the suppression of technologies) and disease conspiracies (e.g., creation of AIDS, chemtrail theory, the alleged link between vaccination and autism). We consider these theories to have four common characteristics: the world or an event is held to be not as it seems; there is believed to be a cover-up by powerful others; the believer’s explanation of events is accepted only by a minority; and the explanation is unsupported when the evidence is weighed up. Our interest is in clearly unfounded ideas.

Ouch.  At least he didn't mention the JFK assassination!

Edited August 10, 2019 by Guest

[Guest]

Just to close the loop, and then I'll crawl back into my hole until at least Groundhog Day:

I really don't care about the JFK assassination anymore.  I'm satisfied from pretty extensive research over many years that LHO more or less acted alone.  But if he didn't, so what?  What do I care if rogue elements of the CIA pulled it off?  What's it got to do with my small-town life?  Ditto for 9/11 - the official version is significantly more plausible to me than any conspiracy theory.  But if it was an inside job or a Mossad operation, so what?  What's it got to do with me?

To pique my interest in the Kennedy assassination or 9/11 these days, you'd have to have a BOMBSHELL piece of watertight evidence.  And I mean BOMBSHELL.  The sort of stuff bandied about here will get nothing more than a roll of the eyes from me.  The debates between pompous Jimbo and the ever-genial DVP do nothing but make me giggle.  The Harvey & Lee stuff is a creative hoot, but it's beyond the pale.  I really don't care about Lee Harvey Oswald's dental records or the alignment of the bullet holes in JFK's shirt and back.  It's all going NOWHERE - doesn't anyone else get the joke???

I'd LOVE it if it could be proved that JFK was assassinated as the result of a massive conspiracy, in the same way I'd LOVE it if it could be proved that an alien craft crashed at Roswell.  It would be fascinating and fun.  But it would really have nothing to do with my life.  The aliens are here?  Fine, what's for lunch?

I voted for Trump after having voted for Obama twice, but the outcome really meant little to me.  I went to bed at 7 on election night and was fully prepared to wake up and find hideous Hillary as my new President.  No big deal.  A friend called me in near-hysterics after Trump was elected and I told him "What difference does it actually make?  We've all lived through something like a dozen Presidents - have any of them made one iota of difference in our day to day lives?  Who really cares who the President is?"  It completely changed his outlook.

If someone wants to dive into the JFK assassination just for fun, as a hobbyist, be my guest.  I've spent more time and money on golf than anyone here will ever spend on the assassination.  But to attach such cosmic importance to it, to become a quasi-religious zealot over some goofy theory that is competing with 25 other goofy theories, strikes me as silly.  ("MY THEORY SN'T GOOFY!!!" rings the cry from 25 separate choruses.)

I debated the minutiae here for a while and did pretty well at it.  But it's endless and tedious.  I once analogized it to Whack-A-Mole.  I just don't have the interest anymore.  Get back to me when you have a no-question-about-it BOMBSHELL.  Show me a Prayer Man photo that is clearly and unequivocally LHO - not a shadowy blob that looks as much like Minnie Pearl as LHO.

My mission with these "conspiracy thinking" posts is simply to try to get people to think critically.  There is no Conspiracy Brotherhood.  All conspiracy theories are not equal.  Some of them are insane, propounded by people you shouldn't trust.  Some of the most high-profile posters fit the emerging psychological profile to a T, or at least that's how it appears to those of us in the peanut gallery.  If you fit the emerging psychological profile, perhaps you shouldn't even trust yourself.  But this is also a tedious and thankless task.  The loons don't see themselves even when they look in the mirror.

[Cliff Varnell]

4 minutes ago, Lance Payette said:

  I really don't care about...the alignment of the bullet holes in JFK's shirt and back.  It's all going NOWHERE - doesn't anyone else get the joke???

You're a lawyer taken to the discussion of a murder case who doesn't care about the physical evidence found with the body.

What a crummy lawyer you are.

[Paul Brancato]

17 minutes ago, Cliff Varnell said:

You're a lawyer taken to the discussion of a murder case who doesn't care about the physical evidence found with the body.

What a crummy lawyer you are.

Indeed. It’s all a facade. He indeed does not care about anything than thinking himself above the fray and smarter than everyone else. 

[W. Niederhut]

1 hour ago, Lance Payette said:

Wait, you want psychiatry and conspiracy thinking?  How about the journal Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology?  How about Daniel Freeman, Professor of Clinical Psychology at the Department of Psychiatry, Medical Sciences Division, University of Oxford, England?  See https://www.psych.ox.ac.uk/team/daniel-freeman.  Will he do?  In 2017, he co-authored "The concomitants of conspiracy concerns," https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5423964/.  I quote:

A conspiracy world view may be a form of mistrust that is typically corrosive to individual and societal well-being. Our aim was to establish the correlates of conspiracy thinking in an epidemiologically representative sample.

1618 people (weighted 26.7%) endorsed the conspiracy belief item. These individuals were more likely to be: male; currently unmarried; less educated; in a lower income household; outside the labour force; from an ethnic minority group; not attending religious services; taking a weapon outside; and perceiving themselves as of lower social standing compared to others. Individuals endorsing the conspiracy belief item had lower levels of physical and psychological well-being, higher levels of suicidal ideation, weaker social networks, less secure attachment style, difficult childhood family experiences, and were more likely to meet criteria for a psychiatric disorder. There were no differences between those who endorsed conspiracy beliefs and those who did not in age, importance of religious beliefs in daily life, body mass index, or in having a gun at home.

Viewing conspiracies in the world is associated with a raised risk of a wide range of adverse circumstances. It is a type of cognitive style that requires systematic empirical study, including monitoring of prevalence, tests of causation, and modelling of propagation.

Read it - it's really quite interesting.  Not what you want to hear, but quite interesting - and it ain't "political science," booby.

You'll hate this part:

Our interest is in ‘false conspiracy theories’ , of which there are many. These include, for example, world conspiracies (e.g., concerning Jews, a new world order, aliens), event conspiracies (e.g., concerning UFOs, moon landings, 9/11), technology conspiracies (e.g., about surveillance, the suppression of technologies) and disease conspiracies (e.g., creation of AIDS, chemtrail theory, the alleged link between vaccination and autism). We consider these theories to have four common characteristics: the world or an event is held to be not as it seems; there is believed to be a cover-up by powerful others; the believer’s explanation of events is accepted only by a minority; and the explanation is unsupported when the evidence is weighed up. Our interest is in clearly unfounded ideas.

Ouch.  At least he didn't mention the JFK assassination!

Pay-out,

       As a psychiatrist who has actually treated many patients suffering from paranoia during the past 35 years, I'm not impressed by young Daniel Freedman's self-advertising and pop-psychology  VR "therapies" -- with the possible exception of VR for desensitization of phobias.  My hunch is that his clinical outcomes in treating paranoia stink-- in the absence of anti-psychotic meds..  In fact, the guy strikes me as a pop psychology salesman.

       Where did he recruit the "paranoid" patients for his "studies?" 

       Do you have any idea how difficult it is to develop a working alliance with a paranoid person?  (Hint: They don't tend to show up at clinics with a chief complaint of being, "paranoid.")

       BTW, do you even know the difference between a psychiatrist and a psychologist?

      Next question.   How was young Daniel Freedman recruited to throw in his pop psychology two cents into this mysterious NIH-related "study" about "conspiracy theorists?"

      Let me guess.   Was it someone with influence over the NIH who is very concerned about the American public discovering the truth about 9/11?

      Someone who would reference non-scientists like Daniel Pipes and Cass Sunstein in the introduction of a pseudo- "science" paper about "conspiracy theorists?"  

      Get real.   Do you also believe the pseudo-scientific mumbo jumbo about 9/11 published by Michael Chertoff's cousin in Popular Science, and the 9/11 NIST report?

      Those pseudo-scientific propaganda pieces are similar to the "Great Pumpkin" theory about the trajectory of JFK's head that the CIA paid some academician to invent after the public finally got to see the Zapruder film in 1975.

      Only people who don't understand science are bamboozled by your nonsense.

      Adios.