{"id":179519,"date":"2018-11-24T05:34:58","date_gmt":"2018-11-24T05:34:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=179519"},"modified":"2018-11-27T06:54:00","modified_gmt":"2018-11-27T06:54:00","slug":"study-shows-60-of-britons-believe-in-conspiracy-theories","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=179519","title":{"rendered":"Study shows 60% of Britons believe in conspiracy theories"},"content":{"rendered":"

Esther Addley \u2013 The Guardian Nov 23, 2018<\/h1>\n
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Those surveyed were asked about conspiracy theories including whether people were being lied to over alien contact, immigration figures, vaccine safety and parliamentary democracy. Click to enlarge<\/p><\/div>\n

Sixty per cent of British people believe at least one conspiracy theory about how the country is run or the veracity of information they have been given, a major new study has found, part of a pattern of deep distrust of authority that has become widespread across Europe and the US.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the UK, people who supported Brexit<\/a><\/strong><\/span> were considerably more likely to give credence to conspiracy theories than those who opposed it, with 71% of leave voters believing at least one theory compared with 49% of remain voters.<\/span><\/p>\n

Almost half (47%) of leave voters believed the government had deliberately concealed the truth about how many immigrants live in the UK<\/a><\/strong><\/span>, versus 14% of remain voters. A striking 31% of leave voters believed that Muslim immigration was part of a wider plot to make Muslims the majority in Britain, a conspiracy theory that originated in French far-right circles that was known as the \u201cgreat replacement<\/a><\/strong><\/span>\u201d. The comparable figure for remain voters was 60%.<\/span><\/p>\n

The disparities between those who voted for Donald Trump<\/a><\/strong><\/span> and Hillary Clinton<\/a><\/strong><\/span> in the US was even more stark, where 47% of Trump voters believed that man-made global warming was a hoax, compared with 2.3% of Clinton voters.<\/span><\/p>\n

The figures were the result of a large-scale international project conducted over six years and in nine countries by researchers at the University of Cambridge and YouGov, funded by the Leverhulme Trus<\/strong><\/span>t<\/a>. The study was the most comprehensive examination of conspiracy theories ever conducted, and marks the first time academics have explored questions of conspiracy beliefs, social trust and news consumption habits across different countries.<\/span><\/p>\n

The researchers also found:<\/span><\/p>\n