Dr. Jeffrey Victor

The recent epidemic of conspiracy rumors is the subject of Dr. Jeffrey Victor’s article featured in the current July/August issue of Skeptical Inquirer magazine.

The magazine is an international magazine for scientists and critical thinkers. His article focuses on QAnon claims and the stolen election rumors. The retired JCC professor applied his research into satanic cult conspiracy rumors to understand how conspiracy rumors work. He offers a new way of understanding conspiracy rumors as a product of the influences of history and culture, rather than the quirks of individual thinking. He suggests that we can understand conspiracy rumors like a virus in society. His article explains how conspiracy rumors have ancient origins; mutate into different forms over time; and are extremely difficult to eradicate completely. Some forms are more harmful than others, and some people are more susceptible to them.

Victor’s article offer answers to: why some conspiracy stories persist over centuries, why many conspiracy rumors spread so fast and so far, why conspiracy believers are so resistant to change, and what can be done to control the harm done by dangerous conspiracy rumors.

Victor is a retired professor of sociology at Jamestown Community College, where he taught for 52 years. Victor received his Ph.D. in sociology from the State University at Buffalo in 1974. In 1988, he received the New York State University’s Chancellor’s Award for Teaching Excellence. He has been an invited speaker at conferences in France, Scotland and the Netherlands. He has appeared on national television on such programs as “Larry King Live”, the “Maury Povich Show” and “The View”. Recently, in July he presented an invited lecture to an international organization of folklore researchers in Ottawa, Canada.

Victor has published two books, nine chapters in edited books and 24 articles in popular and scholarly magazines. His second book, Satanic Panic: The Creation of Contemporary Legend, is a sociological study of rumors and claims about secret criminal satanic cults and false accusations of crimes. His book has a chapter devoted to a rumor panic that occurred in Jamestown in May of 1988. His book received the H. L. Mencken Award from the Free Press Association for the best book of 1993, because it deals with the protection of individual rights against abuses of power. His book has been used in many criminal cases to help innocent people falsely accused of crimes, supposedly committed by people in satanic cults.

At 80 years old, professor Victor is still active and creative. His book, Satanic Panic, and the events he investigated in Jamestown will be featured in a documentary film to be released at the end of this year. A film crew came to Jamestown in April, to film scenes of places reported in Victor’s book.