Jane has her own theory as to why her wellness group got radicalised and she did not – and it’s one that aligns with concerns from conspiracy experts, too. “I think it’s the isolation,” she concludes, citing lockdown as the catalyst, before noting the irony that conspiracies then kick off a cycle of increasing isolation by forcing believers to reject the wider world. “It becomes very isolating because then their attitude is all: ‘Mainstream media … they lie about everything.’”

I wonder why people would have a dismal view of mainstream media, Guardian? I mean, surely we would expect it to hold itself to a rigorous standard of objectivity.

Let's scroll a bit up in your article.

“Far too often, we blame women for turning to alternative medicine, painting them as credulous and even dangerous,” she says. “But the blame does not lie with the women – it lies with the gender data gap. Thanks to hundreds of years of treating the male body as the default in medicine, we simply do not know enough about how disease manifests in the female body.”

Women are overwhelmingly likely to suffer from auto-immune disorders, chronic pain and chronic fatigue – and such patients often hit a point at which their doctors tell them there is nothing they can do. The conditions are under-researched and the treatments are often brutal. Is it any surprise that trust in conventional medicine and big pharma is shaken? And is it any surprise that people look for something to fill that void?

Criado Perez says: “If we want to address the trend of women seeking help outside mainstream medicine, it’s not the women we need to fix; it’s mainstream medicine.”

I mean, do you guys ever look in the mirror and think "maybe providing a politically distorted narrative is a factor in people not trusting me"?