# Conspiracy theories -- confirmed **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [August 12, 2009, 3:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conspiracy-theories-confirmed/506184 "2009-08-12T15:10:20Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Horatius](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/horatius/32/3572_2.png) [@Horatius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Horatius)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2009, 3:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conspiracy-theories-confirmed/506184/61 "2009-08-13T15:18:05Z")
> [@Shagnasty](#): > > Likewise, the Iran-Contra Affair was a true conspiracy involving at least the CIA and the military and is related to the above activities in Central America. The CIA sold arms to Iran to fund the Contras in Nicaragua. The legal proceedings confused most of the public but it was like something out of a bad novel. > > A few people knew about it on the outside but the general public did not until the legal proceedings started. The problem with most of the examples of real conspiracies that have been exposed, is they are missing one key factor: > [@SmashTheState](#): > > In order to qualify, it should be a view which was espoused by either a small group or a single individual, and it should be a view which was widely ridiculed by either the large majority, the powers-that-be, or the “professionals” in the associated field. Can anyone show that there was a group similar to the 9/11 Truthers who went around trying to convince people that Iran/Contra existed as a plot, prior to the whole thing being publicly exposed? Can you show that this group was “widely ridiculed”? The big problem I see with CT types using such historical examples in an attempt to justify their belief in other CTs is that they never seem to be able to show that the CT believers at that time had any greater insight into the real conspiracy. I suspect that, in most cases, they completely missed the real conspiracies that were happening around them. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2009, 3:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conspiracy-theories-confirmed/506184/62 "2009-08-13T15:44:24Z")
> [@SmashTheState](#): > > Many times I’ve mentioned views or theories held by minorities of professionals in a given field (eg/ Penrose’s quantum brain model, Jaynes’ bicameral mind theory, Jung’s archetypal psychology, et al.) and been greeted with hostile pack behaviour by the denizens of SD, snickering and guffawing and slapping each other on the back for successfully flinging dung at the strange monkey which attempted to defy the reigning wisdom of the pack’s silverbacks. I was aware of several instances where people like Pasteur or Copernicus has been the recipients of similar behaviour for defying the groupthink, and often use them to remind people that “commonly accepted” doesn’t mean “true.” Possibly, but by concentrating on those people you ignore the many others who are making an honest effort to get you to supply evidence for your views so they can analyze and discuss said evidence, even if they eventually dismiss it. Rather than look for ammunition against the alleged snickerers, why not just ignore them and concentrate on those who ask pertinent questions? Pasteur and Galileo had to answer such questions (or those who followed up on Pasteur’s and Galilieo’s research had to) before being taken seriously. Paying those dues is part of the process. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2009, 3:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conspiracy-theories-confirmed/506184/63 "2009-08-13T15:45:43Z")
> [@SmashTheState](#): > > Many times I’ve mentioned views or theories held by minorities of professionals in a given field (eg/ Penrose’s quantum brain model, Jaynes’ bicameral mind theory, Jung’s archetypal psychology, et al.) and been greeted with hostile pack behaviour by the denizens of SD, snickering and guffawing and slapping each other on the back for successfully flinging dung at the strange monkey which attempted to defy the reigning wisdom of the pack’s silverbacks. I was aware of several instances where people like Pasteur or Copernicus has been the recipients of similar behaviour for defying the groupthink, and often use them to remind people that “commonly accepted” doesn’t mean “true.” I thought it would be nice to have a few more examples at hand. You don’t have any examples at hand now. What you’re recounting is the problem, not the solution. Your three modern examples are prime evidence for scientists leaving science to throw out notions without backing. Penrose is a particularly bad example. Although he is a distinguished scientist his entire case for his position is essentially, “what we know now is wrong so here’s something I’m advancing to take its place.” He admits this in so many words in an interview in the September issue of _Discover_ magazine (not up on their site yet). > [@](#): > > In my view the conscious brain does not act according to classical physics. It doesn’t even act according to conventional quantum mechanics. It acts according to a theory we don’t have yet. This is being a bit big-headed, but I think it’s a little bit like William Harvey’s discovery of the circulation of blood. He worked out that it had to circulate, but the veins and the arteries just peter out, so how could the blood get from one to the other? And he said, “Well, it must be tiny little tubes there, but we can’t see them, but they must be there.” Nobody believed it for some time. So I’m still hoping to find something like that - some structure that preserves coherence, because I believe it ought to be there. I believe it ought to be there. This may be completely true. It is completely not yet science. He has no evidence, no hypotheses, no predictions, none of the basic apparatus of science. This is not even a criticism. Many advances occur because someone believes that the current theory is wrong and that a better theory must be ought there. If they’re really scientists, though, they know that they have no right for anybody to accept their notions until they can start backing it up in irrefutable ways. Penrose hasn’t. He isn’t a crackpot. Crackpots have no chance of ever being proven right. Penrose is just advancing a hypothesis that may or may not be shown to be right in the future. That’s normal. Using it as a proof that scientists disbelieve everyone who disagrees with them shows an appalling or deliberate misunderstanding of science. I’ve called you several times before on the use of Jaynes as an example. Jaynes proffered a hypothesis that was considered pseudoscience at the time it was written because no possible mechanism could ever be advanced to show it was true. Not only that, but every advance in archaeology over the last 30 years shows that earlier cultures were far more advanced and equivalent to the Greeks in every conceivable sense than Jaynes postulated. He advanced a theory that was crackpot and has been shown by future research to be impossible. Why bring him up? It only embarrasses your case. The Jungians are, if possible, even worse. They are not young mavericks undermining the scientific establishment with radical new notions. They are the last remnants of a hundred-year-old theory that has been almost completely discarded. This is the exact opposite of what you’ve been arguing. They are like the doctors who guffawed at Semmelwiss sure that the old ways were right. Have you given any thought at all to the logic of your position? Views are not even a dime a dozen. One of the top Americans in WWII (possibly Roosevelt, but maybe one of his advisors) said that Churchill spewed out a hundred ideas a day and only four of them were good. Scientists are like this as well. They spew out ideas all the time. Only the tiniest few are good, even a smaller percentage turn out to be groundbreaking, and only a fraction of those overturn current understanding. All scientists know this and make this the core of their approach to new theories. You don’t seem to understand or to accept this most basic fact. Scientists dismiss most new ideas because most new ideas are wrong. Most understates it. The vast majority are wrong. They are accepted only when overwhelming piles of evidence appear. Without the overwhelming piles of evidence you have nothing but a credit for your CV. And those are the good wrong notions, the ones with a possibility of becoming truth. Random theories that require belief or faith that they must somehow be true are dismissed out of hand, and absolutely rightly so. Your understanding of history is as bad as your understanding of science. You gave a list of badly researched and misunderstood events that don’t prove your case at all, some of which actually contradict your position. (This is a hallmark of CT and crackpot theories, BTW. Adherents typically compile mountains of “proof” that are internally inconsistent as if the weight of numbers means more than the logic of understanding.) You can’t expect anyone who has done some real reading on these events to accept your proclamations of their truth. Again, this is the opposite of science. You’re demanding faith and belief in falsehoods. We’re not going to give that to you. No matter how you describe it, what we’re doing is the proper way to proceed. I can’t speak for the others, but I intend to continue. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2009, 4:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conspiracy-theories-confirmed/506184/64 "2009-08-13T16:13:46Z")
> [@Sailboat](#): > > Spain’s decline began long before that, although I suppose if you’re saying that marked the final proof of Spain’s centuries-long fall, you’d be correct. > I don’t have an online citation for this, but I have read (I believe in a book by Richard Humble, who has written several books on dreadnought battleships) that Humble calculated that the number of battleships destroyed by internal magazine explosions during peacetime is equal to or even greater than the number destroyed by enemy action. > > . Yes, that’s what I meant. Yes, and that was the leading theory until recently. _“In 1999, to commemorate the centennial of the sinking of the Maine, National Geographic Magazine commissioned an analysis by Advanced Marine Enterprises, using computer modeling that was not available for previous investigations. The AME analysis examined both theories and concluded that “it appears more probable than was previously concluded that a mine caused the inward bent bottom structure and the detonation of the magazines.””_ ---
**Author:** ![Sailboat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sailboat/32/461_2.png) [@Sailboat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sailboat)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2009, 3:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conspiracy-theories-confirmed/506184/65 "2009-08-14T03:04:59Z")
> [@Horatius](#): > > Can anyone show that there was a group similar to the 9/11 Truthers who went around trying to convince people that Iran/Contra existed as a plot, prior to the whole thing being publicly exposed? Can you show that this group was “widely ridiculed”? Do “Democrats” count? 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Harvey\_The\_Heavy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/c5a1d2/32.png) [@Harvey\_The\_Heavy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Harvey_The_Heavy)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2009, 6:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conspiracy-theories-confirmed/506184/66 "2009-08-14T06:03:06Z")
> [@Cagey\_Drifter](#): > > Does Watergate count? Or was that never ‘crackpot’ in the mainstream view? I think [Martha Mitchell](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martha_Mitchell_effect) was made out to be a crackpot when she first started talking about Watergate. ---
**Author:** ![ivn1188](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/e480ec/32.png) [@ivn1188](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ivn1188)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2009, 3:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conspiracy-theories-confirmed/506184/67 "2009-08-14T15:50:00Z")
> [@RitterSport](#): > > Rove’s involvement in the firing of federal procecutors? I don’t think this is a conspiracy in the normal sense. The firings were probably not illegal – the administration in power has the ability to replace employees of the executive that they don’t feel are doing the right thing. The firings were not secret, and there were public resignations by people who didn’t agree with the administration. The only “conspiratorial” aspect is that Rove had some input into the process. He is allowed to have input; the president can listen to whomever he chooses. Secondly, it was patently obvious that Rove would have given advice, I don’t even see why people are trying to spin it that he didn’t. But it’s not really a conspiracy if you do something you are more or less allowed to do and don’t tell anyone the exact details. ---
**Author:** ![davidm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/davidm/32/225_2.png) [@davidm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/davidm)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2009, 5:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conspiracy-theories-confirmed/506184/68 "2009-08-14T17:53:45Z")
> [@ivn1188](#): > > I don’t think this is a conspiracy in the normal sense. The firings were probably not illegal – the administration in power has the ability to replace employees of the executive that they don’t feel are doing the right thing. The firings were not secret, and there were public resignations by people who didn’t agree with the administration. > > The only “conspiratorial” aspect is that Rove had some input into the process. He is allowed to have input; the president can listen to whomever he chooses. Secondly, it was patently obvious that Rove would have given advice, I don’t even see why people are trying to spin it that he didn’t. But it’s not really a conspiracy if you do something you are more or less allowed to do and don’t tell anyone the exact details. It appears that they may have been fired for refusing to engage in selective prosecutions (or non-prosecutions) for political reasons. IANAL so I’m not sure if either the selective prosecutions or the firings were illegal, but they’re certainly ethically questionable. That fact that Rove and Meyers are being asked to testify seems to me to indicate that someone believes that laws may have been broken by someone somewhere along the way. ---
**Author:** ![griffin1977](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/977dab/32.png) [@griffin1977](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/griffin1977)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2009, 6:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conspiracy-theories-confirmed/506184/69 "2009-08-14T18:01:35Z")
> [@SmashTheState](#): > > Copernicus’ claim that the Earth _goes round the sun_ [edit on my part], Pasteur’s germ theory of sickness These are just examples of unpopular minority scientific opinions that turned out to be correct. There was no conspiracy involved. ---
**Author:** ![sweeteviljesus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/898d66/32.png) [@sweeteviljesus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sweeteviljesus)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2009, 8:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conspiracy-theories-confirmed/506184/70 "2009-08-14T20:12:34Z")
> [@Sailboat](#): > > > [@](#): > > > > Originally Posted by Horatius > > Can anyone show that there was a group similar to the 9/11 Truthers who went around trying to convince people that Iran/Contra existed as a plot, prior to the whole thing being publicly exposed? Can you show that this group was “widely ridiculed”? > > Do “Democrats” count? 🙂 As far as I know, no one in the U.S. outside of the White House knew about this before the story broke. Then it was a matter of a couple of weeks before Reagan copped to it on TV. Rob [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conspiracy-theories-confirmed/506184.md?page=3)