Contaminating COVID-19 dissent: the role of epistemic quarantines in conflating scepticism with conspiracy theories in public health

Public perceptions and discussion of scientific facts became crucial during the COVID-19 pandemic, as various risk estimation claims were used to legitimate novel state of exception policies at a global level and related public health intervention programmes. Critical perspectives in the social sciences have argued that the mainstream media presented an exaggerated account of scientific consensus while excluding well-founded critical dissent. This article presents a qualitative-textual analysis of one example of this form of knowledge construction: the use of the ‘conspiracy theory’ category within articles published by The Guardian newspaper in the UK between February 2020 and February 2022. Our analysis shows that these articles tended to conflate engaged critical positions on pandemic policies with irrational conspiracy theories, thus excluding these former positions from rational discussion and debate. We term this mechanism of exclusion epistemic quarantine, arguing that this extension of the conspiracy-theory category to include scepticism or criticism mis-labelled and potentially alienated genuine scientific criticism, eroding trust among some communities, obscuring sincere plural public health perspectives and undermining the longer-term legitimacy of science.