Atlas Group Archive

Like many others in the class, I had to remember that State of Fear is not real, and that global warming is. Why does it have such an effect? Why are educated and informed people believing, if only for a moment, these outrageous claims?
Earlier in the semester, I read about the performance artist Walid Raad. His work proved, as does this piece of fiction, that as long as you present yourself rationally, professionally, and scientifically, people will believe you. He dressed well, respectably but not too formally, and gave lectures about things that did not exist. In his lecture titled "The Loudest Muttering Is Over: Case Studies from the Atlas Group Archive," Raad introduced himself as one of the founders of the Atlas Group, calling it "an imaginary foundation based in New York and Beirut, established in 1999, whose purpose is to collect, produce, and archive documents of the Lebanese civil wars (1975-91). He said, right away and very clearly, that the organization is imaginary and the documents that he is presenting are produced by him, and yet people believe him! They take his documents as absolute fact. They don't pay attention to what he is actually saying because of his demeanor and formality. His graphs and archives seem to be well researched and are presented as fact, but Raad admits that he produced them.
So why do people believe Walid Raad? Why did I have to remind myself that there is such thing as global warming while reading State of Fear? Maybe the fact is, however educated and enlightened we may claim to be, we're all just sheep.