Sherri Tenpenny is no longer a licensed physician after airing fringe comments and ducking investigators.
“I’m sure you’ve seen the pictures all over the internet of people who have had these shots and now they’re magnetized,” Tenpenny said to the panel of lawmakers.
“They can put a key on their forehead and it sticks … There have been people who have long suspected there’s an interface, yet to be defined, an interface between what’s being injected in these shots and all of the 5G towers.”
The comments backfired. Gross’ bill stalled out after Tenpenny’s comments. And they sparked the investigation that would cost Tenpenny her license.
At least on paper, they suspended her not directly for being a loony, but for being actively hostile to their attempts to investigate what she was saying and why.
Conspiracy theorists take note: They never attempted to "silence" her; they actually asked her to indicate in detail why she believed these things, and she twice refused to show up and explain. After the second time, they then suspended her license.
While board members emphasized the punishment is connected to the procedural issues and not the bunk health claims, the medical board’s staff makes clear the basis for its inquiry in their formal report. They asked Tenpenny what evidence she had that vaccines make people magnetic or interface with cell towers, and for more information about the claim that major metro areas are “liquifying dead bodies and pouring them into the water supply.”
Tenpenny failed to attend either of her two hearings before board staff. Her attorneys even failed to show up to the second. Forcing protracted litigation every time the board wants to interview physicians it regulates, he said, would render the body unable in practice to carry out its duties.
So I think things like this, and like the one about harvesting knee fluid from patients to resell on the black market, are actually a feature of the conspiracy theories.
If you start buying into something pretty plausible, and then later you come to your senses, it's not that painful to just let it go and admit you were wrong. If, on the other hand, you buy into something that's clearly batshit insane, then you can't admit you were wrong and that any toddler could have seen that it didn't make sense. Because at that point it's tantamount to admitting that you're a helpless gullible moron whom no one should ever listen to again.
And presto, you're in deep, and you can't let go, or you pay a terrible cost.
I think it's subconscious. Once people have their identity sufficiently tied into a set of beliefs, it can be impossible to see their own logical mistakes. This can go for religion, politics, conspiracies, etc.
Maybe check out George Lakoff's excellent book on the concept of reality framing, "Don't Think Of An Elephant."