key: cord-0709242-h2irg2ne
authors: Sutton, Robbie M.; Douglas, Karen M.
title: Agreeing to disagree: reports of the popularity of Covid-19 conspiracy theories are greatly exaggerated
date: 2020-07-20
journal: Psychol Med
DOI: 10.1017/s0033291720002780
sha: 82b9b1a79a409a47b5f0bb107373273d574aa5af
doc_id: 709242
cord_uid: h2irg2ne

nan

registration) and significant ( ps < 0.001). Their magnitude is surprising and noteworthy, but also difficult to interpret since the studies differ in many ways. For example, our study was run in late June 2020 and Freeman et al.'s study was run in early May; ours used a relatively educated sample, among whom slightly lower agreement with conspiracy theories can be expected (Douglas, Sutton, Callan, Dawtry, & Harvey, 2016) .

More pertinent, we found levels of agreement half as low again, or lower, when we used conventional agree−disagree scales. Agreement with the China conspiracy theory reduced to roughly 10%; agreement with the conspiracy theories about Jews and Muslims fell to around 1-1.5%. The levels of agreement on the five-point and nine-point agree−disagree scales were not significantly different from each other, p = 0.712, but were significantly lower than on Freeman et al.'s scale (both ps < 0.001).

Our results suggest that Freeman et al.'s (2020a) estimates of the popularity of Covid-19 conspiracy theories were overestimated. In their reply to McManus et al. (2020) , Freeman et al. (2020b) wrote that, 'the item content, not the scale, seems to us to merit the real focus', but in our study the scale doubled the apparent popularity of the item content. As happens often (Lee, Sutton, & Hartley, 2016) , striking results of Freeman et al.'s (2020a) study were highlighted in a press release that stripped them of nuance and caveats, and led to some sensational and misleading media reporting that may have complicated the very problems that we all, as researchers, are trying to help solve.

Acknowledgements. The authors contributed equally to this correspondence.

Financial support. The research received no specific grant from any funding agency, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.

Ethical standards. The authors assert that all procedures contributing to this study comply with the ethical standards of the relevant national and institutional committees on human experimentation and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2008. Data collection for the proof-of-concept study outlined in this correspondence was approved by the School of Psychology's Ethics Committee at the University of Kent (ID 202015932725186541). 

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