How Odd Ideas Survive - Geoffrey Cowley

It all seems perfectly ludicrous: 39 people don their new sneakers, pack their flight bags and poison themselves in the solemn belief that a passing UFO will whisk them off to wonderland. The rest of us have more sense than that, right? Actually , whether we think Jesus died for our sins or assume that the federal government created the AIDS virus, most of us harbour beliefs for which hard evidence is lacking. In fact our firmest convictions are often the hardest to justify rationally.

Viruses of The mind: How Odd Ideas Survive 

Newsweek, 20 November 1997 Geoffrey Cowley