| | When is a conspiracy not a conspiracy?Daniel Pipes defines conspiracy theory as "the fear of non-existent conspiracies." By that standard, the chemist Louis Pasteur sought the origin of disease in non-existent "germs." (No one had ever seen one.) In the lifetime before Pasteur chemists sought to understand the world through the operation of non-existent "atoms." You do not know until you have proof that you have proof. In other words, while not every claim to the existence of a "conspiracy" is true such claims are no less (or more) valid than any other assertion lacking direct evidence.
That some people who happen to have social standing and who also happen to evidence African-American ancestry assert that AIDS is a government conspiracy against the black community might achieve some weight from the Tuskegee Experiments.
When federal police confronted the Branch Davidians at Waco, the media spread stories of sexual depravity, weird rituals, and a plot against the outside world—exactly the kind of fables the medieval authorities told about Jews and heretics. The result, as before, was a pogrom.
But this event never works its way into Pipes’s account. If it did, he’d probably accuse the Davidians of paranoia. He’d be right, of course, but he’d miss the heart of the tale. Which, come to think of it, is exactly what he’s done.
Title: Conspiracy: How the Paranoid Style Flourishes and Where it Comes From
Author: Daniel Pipes
Published: New York: The Free Press, 1997
Price: $25.00 (hardcover), $17.00 (softcover)
Pages: 258
Reviewer: Jesse Walker
Affiliation: Competitive Enterprise Institute
http://www.independent.org/publications/tir/article.asp?articleID=366&issueID=29
From the author's website:
Conspiracy theories - the fear of nonexistent conspiracies - are flourishing in the United States. Republican, Democratic, and independent presidential candidates espouse them. Growing political institutions (the Nation of Islam, the militias) are premised on them. A majority of Americans say they believe John F. Kennedy was killed not by a lone gunman but by a conspiracy, and a majority of black Americans hold the U.S. government responsible for the spread of drugs. O. J. Simpson famously beat his criminal rap by convincing a jury of a conspiracy theory: that the Los Angeles police framed him. Two young men, their heads spinning with conspiracy theories about Washington taking freedoms away from Americans, blew up a government building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 (including 19 children) and wounding 550.
Chapter 1: Conspiracy Theories Everywhere
from Conspiracy: How the Paranoid Style Flourishes and Where It Comes From
http://www.danielpipes.org/books/conspiracychap.php
The review by Jesse Walker for the Independent Insttitute goes into detail on the sloppy research in this book. I take these two examples from the chapter posted on the author's website.
"A majority of Americans say they believe John F. Kennedy was killed not by a lone gunman but by a conspiracy, and a majority of black Americans hold the U.S. government responsible for the spread of drugs."
There are no citations for these claims. According to which poll? For something this important to the thesis of the book, I would expect more than one of each, by different agencies over time. In other words, I would expect a Harris Poll from 1980 and a Gallup Poll from 1993 and so on. This is not a minor point, after all, something we can accept prima facie and then keep going, like the number of sport fishermen in an article about hunting. This allegation is central to the thesis. It is unsubstantiated.
" A columnist calls these "the life blood of the African-American community," and a clinical psychologist notes that there is "probably no conspiracy involving African-Americans that was too far-fetched, too fantastic, or too convoluted."
Who are these people? Who is the columnist? Is this a nationally syndicated columnist? What is the syndicate? Forgive my extreme age, but in my youth, I read William F. Buckley, Walter Lippman, and Art Buchwald. They were syndicated. Then, reading tabloids and other magazines from the supermarket check-out, I discovered other "syndicated columnists"
Furthermore, I point out that for three years I have been a columnist for the American Numismatic Association, an organization which is over 100 years old and was chartered by Congress in 1912. And the only other private organization with a Congressional charter is the American Red Cross. So, am I a congressionally approved columnist whose assertions can pass muster without attribution or identification... or facts?
Who is the "clinical psychologist"? Again, I point out that in a matter of weeks, I am going to be a degreed criminologist and in a matter of months I will be state-licensed. I must insist that no one allow those hallmarks to hoist me above standards for proof. Certainly, when I claim that social poverty is a consequence of personal criminality -- a truth I learned from Robert Bidinotto who cited Dr.Stanton Sameow -- that the claim at least be attributed to me... even if the citator is too lazy to track my sources.
This summer, I have a class in social science research. We are expected to read, review and criticise three kinds of journal article. I asked if undergraduates could find procedural faults with works that have passed peer review. My instructor said -- as politely as he could -- that there is a lot junk out there. This book is evidence of that claim.
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