56 Real Conspiracies
Of course, understanding that many conspiracy theories are false and believed for not fully rational reasons does not show that there never are any actual conspiracies. Some of the more infamous and true conspiracy theories in the United States include:
During Prohibition (1920-1933), the U.S. Treasury Department poisoned industrial alcohol in an attempt to discourage bootleggers from using it to make alcoholic beverages. But apparently not all bootleggers were concerned with public health, and they produced and sold the beverages anyway, resulting in thousands of deaths. The government secretly continued the practice until the end of Prohibition, despite knowing its effects.
In 1932, the U.S. Public Health Service conducted an experimental trial of a treatment for syphilis on several hundred African-American men in Tuskegee, Alabama, without securing their informed consent. Men with the disease were never given adequate treatment for it and were never fully informed of their role in the experiment.
In 1972, President Richard Nixon authorized a break-in at the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee in the Watergate Office Building and then unsuccessfully tried to cover up his administration’s involvement.
In each of these cases, portions of the U.S. government conspired to commit harmful actions while keeping their role secret. This meets the letter definition of a “conspiracy” which is when any group of people have a secret plan to do something illegal or harmful. Given that definition, we can plausibly suspect that many actions by many governments result from conspiracies or secret plans to cause harm, particularly in the areas of espionage and counter-intelligence. Coming up with these conspiracy theories— and determining how well they are supported by available evidence—is the job of watchdog organizations, investigative reporters, and (later) historians.
So, there most definitely are conspiracies, and some conspiracy theories are true. But not all of them are. So, we are brought once again to the difficult epistemic challenge of trying to sort out the true from the false or the reasonable from the unreasonable. Are there any rules or indicators to help us distinguish between plausible and implausible conspiracy theories?
There are no rules that will reliably sort the true conspiracy theories from the false ones, but the following rules may serve as a set of helpful indicators:
1. The bigger and more powerful the conspiracy is supposed to be, the less likely it is real. Anyone who has managed a sizable group project knows how hard it is to get people to coordinate their efforts. The task becomes even harder, or impossible, if the shared effort is to cover up some harmful or immoral secret. So, the more people who must be included in the conspiracy, the bigger the lie that must be told, and the more harmful the thing being kept secret is, the more unlikely it is that a conspiracy will succeed.
2. Hanlon’s Razor: