An article in the June 20 issue of Science News by Bruce Bower reports some interesting psychological studies of oft-maligned conspiracy-theorists. Though not intended to comfort those of us who write about fictional conspiracies because we’re afraid to write about the real conspiracy theories in which we believe, the results of the studies are oddly comforting. (By fictional conspiracies, I mean novels such as those of John LeCarre, a master of conspiracy fiction.)

Viren Swami of Westminster College, London, studied believers in 9/11 conspiracy theories and concluded, among other less-flattering things, that such people tend to:

• take a cynical stance toward politics
• mistrust authority
• endorse democracy

Apparently in 1994 Ted Goertzel of Rutgers concluded conspiracy-theorists tend to have “selective skepticism,” though. They are skeptical only “about information from the government or other sources they consider suspect.” Hmm. Does this mean that more-rational people are skeptical of all information (probably a good idea IMHO) or just that  they aren’t skeptical of any information? Maybe we wildly imaginative people are just exercising good critical-thinking skills.

Robert Goldberg of the University of Utah also puts a more-positive spin on conspiracy-theorists. His studies show that we conspiracy-theorists “share an optimistic conviction that [we] can find ‘the truth,’ spread it to the masses, and foster social change.” (Sounds a bit like a blogger, doesn’t it?)

• Sidebar: I do not believe in any 9/11 conspiracies other than the terrorist conspiracy against Western civilization. I know that steel can melt – that’s how they make it.

In other words, the myth that conspiracy-theorists are all paranoids with low self-esteem has been exploded. (I recommend the home pages of all three professors to lawyers and mystery-writers alike. There’s much food for thought in their research.)

Coincidence

Coincidentally, as I am writing this, I have received a comment on this blog concerning a conspiracy theory of the Columbine High School shootings. Not only is the comment timely, but coincidentally I once fantasized a conspiracy about the string of school shootings that culminated in Columbine. Such is the Internet that coincidences of this sort can happen often: with millions and billions of posts, the odds of two people thinking the same bizarre things are quite high.

The comment reinforces my understanding that  my imagination is just that: imagination and not investigation.

On the other hand, Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable demonstrates rationally that truth is often stranger than fiction. If I had written in 2000 a story about a vast Islamic-fundamentalist conspiracy to fly four airplanes into four of America’s monumental buildings, I would have been laughed at.

Unfortunately, there are really evil people out there who do conspire when they stumble across one another to do really evil things. As for the comment, for now at least I’m not going to permit it to be posted on this blog, because I don’t want this blog to be labeled as a conspiracy-theory blog.

To the commenter who is now in moderation limbo: I will write more about the topic, and I may grow brave enough eventually to post your comment.