Brian L. Keeley (2024), Inquiry, 68(8), 2744–2764 — DOI-10.1080/0020174X.2024.2375771
Key takeaways
- Many conspiracy theories start not from errant data but from lies and fabricated facts, so the pernicious cases are bad-faith pseudo-explanations — and science has analogous value-driven false starting points.
Seeded from the abstract alone, not a reading. What follows is what the work says about itself.
Starting from an LA Times column arguing that Alex Jones is not a “theorist” but a liar, Keeley extends his earlier account of where conspiracy theories begin — “unaccounted-for” and “contradictory” errant data — with two further starting points that are falsehoods: lies and “fabricated facts”. Conspiracy theories built on these are pernicious precisely because they are not offered in good faith as explanations. Comparing conspiratorial with scientific explanation, he finds similar erroneous starting points in science, often reflecting value-laden agendas beyond accurate explanation.
Standing in the record
Filed from the 2026-09-26 sweep of the papers-feed tracker for philosophy: 5 seconds of active reading over 1 session. Deferred because nobody has read it closely here yet, not on merit.
Priority for a deeper reading: low — t=5s and paywalled; the abstract gives the thesis.
What a deeper reading should check:
- It extends a well-known account (Keeley 1999, “Of Conspiracy Theories”) into a taxonomy of the inputs to explanation; check how “fabricated facts” differ from lies and from errant data.
- The science comparison bears on values in science and on the epistemics of misinformation; check which scientific cases are used.
- Companion to LIT-119 (Keeley, “Conspiracy Theories and Public Trust”).
Access when seeded: The tandfonline page sits behind Cloudflare. Crossref gave the author, online date 2024-07-13, issue 68(8) (2025-09) and pages 2744–2764, and OpenAlex gave the full abstract; closed access, no open copy found (OpenAlex; a ResearchGate record exists but was not fetched). Keywords are my own.