To give me a flavour of the course, Shermer describes how many conspiracy theories use the ‘anomalies-as-proof’ strategy to build a superficially convincing case that something is amiss. Holocaust deniers, for instance, argue that the structure of the (badly damaged) Krema II gas chamber at Auschwitz-Birkenau doesn’t match eye-witness accounts of SS guards dropping gas pellets through the holes in the roof. From this, they claim that no one could have been gassed at Krema II, therefore no one would have been gassed at Auschwitz-Birkenau, meaning that no Jews were systematically killed by the
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