Why I Don’t Believe in Conspiracy Theories

"With this [CIA] memo and the CIA's influence in the media," author Peter Janney wrote in a guest column on our site last fall, "the concept of 'conspiracy theorist' was engendered and infused into our political lexicon and became what it is today: a term to smear, denounce, ridicule, and defame anyone who dares to speak about any crime committed by the state, military or intelligence services."

Janney, whose late father Wistar Janney had been a high-ranking CIA executive, continued: "People who want to pretend that conspiracies don't exist -- when in fact they are among the most common modus operandi of significant historical change throughout the world and in our country -- become furious when their naive illusion is challenged."

So let me see if I understand... The author believes in conspiracies that have been proved otherwise he dismisses them as, well... wild conspiracies.

So how would one ever go about investigating a possible conspiracy to obtain proof as conspiracies that haven't been proved are dismissed out of hand?

Sure, many conspiracy theories are nonsense. Sometimes these nonsense conspiracy theories might themselves be the product of a conspiracy to make conspiracy theories look ridiculous. Wait.. is that another conspiracy theory?