Seth C. Kalichman

Who is Seth C. Kalichman?

Seth C. Kalichman is a clinical community psychologist and professor of social psychology at the University of Connecticut, who researches HIV/AIDS prevention and care.

Kalichman is the director of the Southeast HIV/AIDS Research & Education Project in Atlanta, Georgia and Cape Town, South Africa, the editor of the journal AIDS and Behavior and the author of Denying AIDS: Conspiracy Theories, Pseudoscience, and Human Tragedy, an examination of HIV/AIDS denialism. Royalties from the book fund antiretroviral drugs for people with HIV/AIDS in Africa.

Kalichman spent a year infiltrating HIV denialist groups. He argues that denialism is often a coping strategy, and that followers are often anti-government, anti-establishment, and prone to cognitive distortions; he says that leaders in denialism exhibit paranoid personality disorder. He began researching denialism after reading the work of Nicoli Nattrass.

He is the developer of the Sexual Compulsivity Scale.