Critical Thinking Case Study
Students will be broken into groups of five or six to work on a presentation on a particular critical thinking topic. This year the theme is CONSPIRACY THEORIES!
This presentation will be delivered to the class, and a PowerPoint presentation will be made available on our class website. I hope to have the first two presentations completed before the end of September, and final presentations completed before the first week of December. For each of the conspiracy hypotheses you'll be considering, the goal of the presentation is to develop answers to two questions: 1. Is belief in the conspiracy reasonable? (Related, but not identical question: In your estimation, what is the likelihood that the conspiracy is true?) You'll need to justify your answers. 2. What factors may be involved in explaining why people believe the conspiracy? (These may be evidential, psychological or socio-historical factors ...) |
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I'm not providing a set of readings on these topics in advance. Part of your task as a group will be to do some research for yourself on the topic. I will arrange meetings with your group, however, to go over the key questions and concepts that I'd like addressed, and to suggest some readings or online resources.
1. Who killed John F. Kennedy?
The official story is that Lee Harvey Oswald, a lone gunman, shot JFK in 1963. My first exposure to conspiracy theories was through a close childhood friend who was obsessed with JFK shooting. He was 10 years old. Somehow he was exposed to the idea that Oswald couldn't have worked alone (I suspect now from his dad). Alternative theories have circulated for years. Oliver Stone's 1991 move JFK popularized a version involving the CIA, the FBI, the Mafia, the "military-industrial complex", and the Vice President at the time, Lyndon Johnson, with three shooters involved in the actual assassination. Different accounts identify different actors as the primary agents responsible for the assassination (Cubans, the Soviets, the Federal Reserve, the Secret Service, ...).
Group: Tirra Birchmier, Alec Brown, Thomas Cahill, Kyle Grote, Madison Martin, Claire Yetley
Presentation: Tuesday, Oct 1
Presentation: Tuesday, Oct 1
2. Was the collapse of the World Trade Center towers on 9/11 an "inside job"?
This conspiracy theory says that elements within the US government manufactured the events of 9/11 to make them look like a terrorist attack, in order to raise support for military interventions in the Middle East. They believe that the collapse of the towers was a controlled demolition.
Group: Nolan Crees, Hannah Marsh, Adam Nguyen, Tanner Smith, Frank Vaineo, Cole Westphal
Presentation: Tuesday, Oct 15
Presentation: Tuesday, Oct 15
3. Is HIV/AIDS a human-made disease?
This theory challenges the official story that the HIV virus originated in African monkey populations. There are a range of alternative hypotheses, from the belief that HIV was the inadvertent result of experiments in the development of vaccines, to claims that human immunodeficiency virus was developed by scientists working for the U.S. government.
Recent surveys indicate that a significant minority of African Americans believe that HIV has human origins, and specifically that the government created HIV to wipe out African American communities.
Recent surveys indicate that a significant minority of African Americans believe that HIV has human origins, and specifically that the government created HIV to wipe out African American communities.
Group: Haleigh Delavan, Alexandria Lemke, Joe Nobile, Sue Pham
Presentation: Thursday, October 24
Presentation: Thursday, October 24
4. Is human-caused global warming a hoax?
The global warming conspiracy asserts that the global community of climate scientists has colluded to fabricate a vast body of scientific evidence and literature in order to deceive the world into believing there is a significant anthropogenic component to increases in global temperatures, with the objective of misdirecting research funding, political power, or simply money.
Group: Shelby Gosa, Nick Karaskiewicz, Tom Knief, Cole Knutson, DiAnte Lewis, Brad Shilling
Presentation: Tuesday, November 5
Presentation: Tuesday, November 5
5. Is there a group of international elites manipulating world events in order to usher in a "New World Order"?
This conspiracy theory states that a small group of international elites controls and manipulates governments, industry, and media organizations worldwide. It has been said, for example, that these elites have caused most of the major wars of the last 200 years, carry out "false flag" attacks to manipulate populations into supporting them, and to have a grip on the world economy, deliberately causing inflation and depressions at will.
Group: Caedron Bartles, Ryhanna Downard, Brenna Giusti, Alyssa Wan Azhar
Presentation: Tuesday, November 19
Presentation: Tuesday, November 19