Was Barack Obama born in the USA? The records say he was, but there are plenty of US citizens who don’t believe it.

These “birthers”, as they are called, believe that he was born in Kenya, not Hawaii. Alternatively, some cling to the notion that he was born in Indonesia, or that because his father was Kenyan, he is not a “natural-born citizen” of the US, and therefore not qualified to be President. Suffice it to say, these claims have made no progress in the US courts – but that, of course, is precisely what conspiracists would expect.

Ridding people’s minds of bizarre or incorrect beliefs is extraordinarily hard, as Greg Marx wrote recently in Columbia Journalism Review. He was writing about the myths that have been fostered in the US about the UK National Health Service, including Sarah Palin’s notorious “death panel” remarks. The New York Times, with magisterial but perhaps misplaced gravity, said these euthanasia claims “appear to be unfounded”. Why not say they’re garbage, you ninnies?

The extent to which the birther myth has taken root has recently been put to the test, in a Research 2000 poll for Daily Kos, a Democratic blog with a large audience. (Kos is the US Army nickname of the founder of the website, since you asked. His first name is Marcos.)  
 
The survey asked 2,400 people: “Do you believe that Barack Obama was born in the United States of America or not?” - and only 11 per cent of those questioned said no. Depending upon your viewpoint, this is either not very newsworthy, or terrifying.  
 
But the  real problems emerge when we get down to details. The stand-out statistic was that only 42 per cent of Republicans questioned (compared to 93 per cent of Democrats) said they actually believe Obama was born in America, with 28 per cent believing that he was not and the other 30 per cent unsure.
 
A closer inspection reveals that only 527 Republicans were involved in the questionnaire – this raises questions about the margins of error for those Republican estimates (the survey suggested a range of plus or minus 2 per cent for the full survey, so it will be more than that), and the representativeness of the sample. 
 
The Daily Kos was clearly not unhappy to show Republicans in a bad light. “Once again”, they say in a commentary on the poll, “Republicans find themselves outside the American mainstream. And reality.”
 
Worse still was the way some other media covered the story. “Less Than Half Of Republicans Believe Obama Was Born In US” declared the Huffington Post - misleading because it fails to deal fairly with the 30 per cent who said they were unsure. The survey found that 42 per cent of Republicans thought he was born in the US and 28 per cent said he wasn’t, so the accurate take would have been that only about a quarter of republicans apparently don't believe Obama was born in America.
 
But a fair commentary would have noted that, of those Republicans who expressed a view, 60 per cent (42 per cent against 28 per cent) did believe Obama was born in the US. It is therefore misleading to suggest that most Republicans believe Obama wasn't born in the US.
 
All one can honestly say is that the myth has taken root in some US citizens, predominantly members of the Republican Party. Why? This may reflect the US media’s reluctance to call it like it is. But other countries have myths, too. Birthers may be the crazy end of the conspiracy spectrum, but the problem goes much wider, and not only in the US.
 
Greg Marx quotes the Yale political scientist John Bullock, who says: “The media is going to have a very hard time trying to persuade Republicans that a particular attack on Obama is false, no matter how good a job they do, and vice versa.” And even if a specific factual misunderstanding can be refuted, the judgment it facilitated is likely to remain, he says. In other words, even if the idea that the government wants to create “death panels” is discredited, the suspicion of health care reform that the belief fostered will linger.
 
If he is right, however often the myth of Obama’s birth is refuted, some people will believe there was something odd about it. Mad ideas, like mud, tend to stick.