aberrational

At least since the publication of Richard Hofstadter's "The Paranoid Style in American Politics," belief in conspiracy theories has been seen as an aberrational, fringe phenomenon.

Now a new paper by a team at the University of Antwerp, led by Sander Van de Cruys, argues that it’s not so aberrational either.

The conventional view is that conspiracy theories and those who embrace them are aberrational.

So the moral problem that flows from the aberrational view is that it reinforces the sense of exclusion that is at the very root of people's autonomic search for alternative answers in conspiracy theories.

The stark 1-out-of-7 underrepresentation we’ll see on the debate stage Wednesday isn’t aberrational for the GOP, even in 2023: Just 8 percent of members of Congress across the House and Senate are Republican women.