> The thing I find most infuriating speaking to anyone who believes in a conspiracy theory is that no rational argument can win them round because their argumen

> The thing I find most infuriating speaking to anyone who believes in a conspiracy theory is that no rational argument can win them round because their arguments are rarely rational or based on concrete evidence. Well, if you want to have a constructive dialog with them, getting angry isn't so great. In this sort of situation the content of the argument isn't what's at issue; far more important is the motivation for holding the position. The conversation should be directed towards contextualizing the position in the person's life. Your goal in the discussion shouldn't be to convince the other person, but to understand what they're thinking and why. If you mistrust scientists, why the hell would you be convinced by scientific evidence? The productive discussion is to be had about the mistrust. You can't just ignore their mistrust and argue as if scientific evidence is admissible: that is assuming your position in order to justify your position. I'd also like to emphasize that unless you're the one doing the research, and even then, there is scarcely ever concrete evidence available. Especially for something like vaccines where the positive benefit is the absence of something negative, evidence is quite indirect. You and I trust science. I believe that trust is justified but it is something that needs justification. An important thing about people is that they are more rational in the small, especially about concrete aspects of their day-to-day lives, than they are in the large, especially when it comes to lofty concepts and abstract models of the world that they don't have direct experience with. Conspiracy theories are dangerous because they allow the latter irrationality to negatively impact the former rationality. However, turning it around, reasoning from a person's concrete life and point of view towards understanding abstractions such as institutions of medicine, science, politics, etc. is a way to counter conspiracy theories. So, tl;dr; it's not that rational arguments can't win such people over, it's that you have to start from a different viewpoint and you have to use a process that isn't quite listing evidence, weighing it, and deducing logical consequence. Rationality is much bigger than that sort of thing. If you apply rational methods empathetically, you will convince a lot more people. This is true in all spheres of life. Even at the lab bench.