Discourses of Public Health-Related Controversies. A Comparison Between the Conspiracist video Plandemic and the Vioxx medical scandal

Conspiracy theories related to public health have been proliferating since the outbreak of the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic. The release of the viral Plandemic video interview, where former National Cancer Institute scientist Judy Mikovits alleges that US public health institutions have planned and profited from the pandemic, falls within this phenomenon. The appeal of Plandemic potentially draws on documented episodes of unethical behaviour on the part of scientists and health institutions, raising questions as to what analogies and differences may exist between the representation of public health conspiracy theories and that of actual cases of medical science misconduct. To address these questions, the present study applies a qualitative, discourse analytical approach to compare Plandemic with a 2005 PBS interview to FDA Associate Director of Drug Safety-turned-whistleblower David Graham, whose work was instrumental in uncovering serious and sometimes fatal health risks linked to the use of painkiller Vioxx, withdrawn in 2004. Drawing on the assumption that both Mikovits and Graham used language to promote their standpoints, which inevitably involves a degree of persuasion and ideology, the analysis focuses on linguistic and textual features that can be used to convey ideological messages – such as lexical choices, actor representation, recurring themes, coherence and evidentiality – identifying and comparing them across the two interviews. Results reveal some points in common, for instance in the representation of involved actors, as well as profound differences involving, for example, argumentation and evidentiality strategies. The concluding section thus elaborates on how these results raise further questions concerning how close and credible the two interviews may be perceived by recipients who do not engage in fact-checking.