Mailbag: Conspiracy Theories vs. Real Conspiracies

It is time for another entry in the mailbag series where I answer feedback email from readers and others. If you want to send me a question, comment or any other kind of feedback, please do so using the contact info on the about page.

Steve sent in a comment about his views on a previous article published here at Debunking Denialism called Six Ways to Debunk Any Conspiracy Theory that looked at common flaws and weaknesses in many conspiracy theories: they posit that members of the alleged conspiracy are immune to leaks, have very inconsistent capabilities, have extreme powers of prediction, wildly different methods and goals and the fact that they are typically based on very little evidence and are often constructed to be almost impossible to refute in principle.

Steve did not like the way I used the term “conspiracy theory”:

Right away, we notice several major red flags that tells us that we are dealing with a 9/11 truther.

(1) He uses the term “government version” to describe the mainstream scientific account of the events during the 9/11 terror attacks that have been researched and put together by thousands of journalists, scientists, medical doctors and engineers. This is an attempt to marginalize the mainstream scientific position and pretend that it is created by some shadowy establishment that want to hide the truth from people about “what really happened”. He is also wrong to say that anyone who objected to any part of the mainstream explanations was labeled a conspiracy theorists. This is inaccurate because scientists, journalists and engineers continued for many years to debate various details of the events. The people who were labeled as conspiracy theorists were the people who refused to listen to any evidence, make up stuff as they went along and continued to push scientific falsehoods and misinformation even when corrected.

(2) He also conflates “conspiracy theory” with “conspiracy”. These two are not the same. To put it simply, a conspiracy is just a covert plan by some people to do something that hurts people or breaks the law. In contrast, psychological research defines a conspiracy theory is a set of claims about an event that are (i) unverified, (ii) sensationalist, (iii.) less likely to be true than the mainstream explanations, (iv.) assume constant malign intent, (v.) have low standards of evidence and is (vi.) self-insulating.

(3) He claims that the mainstream account of the 9/11 terror attacks are not supported by any evidence. This is, of course entirely false. Evidence for the mainstream version has been discussed at length in the 9/11 Commission Report, several reports from the National Institutes of Standards and Technology (NIST) and even a special edition of Popular Mechanics.

Steve continues to even attack the very term “conspiracy theory” outright:

It is certainly true that a scientific theory is a well-supported explanatory model that is supported by evidence. However, context matters. Thus, the term “conspiracy theory” should be viewed as a single term, just like “nail file”. It would be absurd to object to the latter term by pointing out that nail files really do not have anything to do with computer files. It is only fallacious to use the term “theory” when you are trying to label a robust scientific model as merely a guess or inflate a random untestable claim to the same status as a comprehensive scientific model.

The term “conspiracy theory” is both useful and accurate to use, as long as one is clear with what you mean by it.