The best way to silence them is to pay no attention at all and then, like a tiresome child, they will get bored and go away.
No, they don't. They get louder and louder, bolder and bolder, more persistent in attracting the attention they crave.
It is, of course, entirely possible that we, in an attempt to debunk them are, by the very nature of this forum, perpetuating them.
Possible, but not likely. Conspiracists generally don't crave our kind of attention, and they avoid it when they can. They crave gullibility, not skepticism. They know their ideas can't survive a fair fight, so they go to great lengths to make the fight unfair in their favor. Web sites like this one teach critical thinking and give examples of it. If more people thought critically out of habit, conspiracy theorists would soon realize that the only kind of attention they're likely to get is that which puts their ideas to rigorous tests. Ignoring the problem and hoping it goes away rarely has the desired outcome. It usually ends up prolonging and exacerbating a crisis.
Many conspiracy theorists are good at making their theories not seem like conspiracy theories. The reader may not have the time or expertise to see through the misstated facts and poor reasoning. We don't have to fear poorly-supported ideas. We don't have to dispel them at all costs. But not to provide an alternative for people to measure against the conspiracy theory leaves them a very difficult choice between the conspiracy theory and some explanation they have to come up with on their own.
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