A conspiracy theory is a theory that defies common historical or current understanding of events, under the claim that those events are the result of manipulations by one or more secretive powers or conspiracies.

1. A "conspiracy theory" is a colloquial term for referring to unconventional theories about current or historical events as unfounded, outlandish, or irrational.

Conspiracy theories in general allege that some particular event — such as an assassination, a revolution, or even the failure of a product — resulted not solely from the visible action of overt political or market forces, but rather from covert manipulation.

But because routine conspiracy theories are often simply allegations of covert action, and because these tend to be based on little or no solid evidence, the expression "conspiracy theory," in common speech is used to refer to allegations of collusion that the speaker considers unproven, unlikely, or false.

Conspiracy and conspiracy theory

The word conspiracy comes from the Latin "conspirare," ("to breathe together"), and in contemporary usage it is a situation where two or more people agree to perform an illegal or immoral act. The essential components are the involvement of at least two people, secrecy and malicious intent. The actual existence of countless thousands of such conspiracies is well-known and includes organized crime and gangs as well as cartels in restraint of trade, organized political bribery, and so forth. At any given time, hundreds or thousands of conspiracies are afoot. Such conspiracies are crimes in most nations, and one can be prosecuted on the basis of conspiring to commit an illegal act or being part of a network that was engaged in doing so. For a discussion of this sort of conspiracy, see the article conspiracy. (Note: The term "conspiracy theory" is thus sometimes also used refer to sociological attempts to study the phenomenon of conspiracy.)

While the term conspiracy theory could refer to any theory positing the existence of a conspiracy (but as yet unproven), it can be used by people as a disparaging rhetorical device to refer to ideas that, in their opinion, are:

• Unproven theories that are generally considered false;

• Impossible to prove true, or to falsify;

• Paranoid or baseless.

Historians generally use the term conspiracy to refer to a conspiracy that is considered to be real, proven, or at least seriously plausible and with some element of support.

The waters are muddied by the fact that powerful groups or individuals may have an interest in trying to discredit those who accuse them of real or imagined crimes. The label of "conspiracy theory" has been used to mock or denigrate social and political dissent, for instance when a powerful public figure is accused of corruption.

The term conspiracists can be used disparagingly to refer to a person who is likely to believe in a conspiracy; psychologists note that a person who believes in one conspiracy theory can be a believer in other conspiracy theories as well.

Ridicule, and even the diagnosis of schizophrenia has been used as a means of silencing political dissent, for example in the Soviet Union (see anti-psychiatry).

In justifying the classification of a theory as a conspiracy theory, detractors tend to level accusations that the theory is:

1. Not backed up by sufficient evidence.

2. Phrased in such a way as to be unfalsifiable.

3. Improbably complex.

Defenders point out in response that:

1. Those powerful people involved in the conspiracy hide, destroy, or obfuscate evidence.

2. Skeptics/apologists are not (in their opinion) prepared to keep an open mind.

3. Skeptics/apologists may be politically motivated and have a vested interest in the status quo.

Falsifiability

Karl Popper claimed that science is essentially defined as a set of falsifiable theories; theories and claims which are not falsifiable are thus not science. Critics of conspiracy theories sometimes argue that many of them are not falsifiable and so cannot be scientific. This accusation is often accurate, and is a necessary consequence of the logical structure of certain kinds of conspiracy theories. These take the form of uncircumscribed existential statements, alleging the existence of some action or object without specifying the place or time at which it can be observed. Failure to observe the phenomenon can then always be the result of looking in the wrong place or looking at the wrong time — that is, having been duped by the conspiracy. This makes impossible any demonstration that the conspiracy does not exist. Establishing a negative is philosophically problematic, though perhaps especially so in this context. Falsificationists might also claim that this makes such theories unscientific.

For example, consider how one would prove the widely believed UFO conspiracy theory (in which aliens are said to have visited Earth), followed by the official denials (perhaps chiefly because the U.S. Government, or others, is hiding the evidence) that any such thing has happened. Since the theory does not specify when or where or how the visits or the conspiracy occurred, it is not possible to show it to be false. Even if, for example, we were given the run of the Pentagon (or some other government's) archives, the possibility always exists that there is an archive somewhere else detailing the conspiracy, to which we do not have access.

Jerry Bowyer, referring to allegations that the 2003 War in Iraq was the result of George W. Bush doing the bidding of oil companies, said that "I like this conspiracy theory better than the rest because it is one of the few that actually permits empirical disconfirmation". He considered that the declining share prices of oil companies was empirical evidence against this theory. [1] (http://www.nationalreview.com/nrof_comment/comment-bowyer103102.asp) (In opposition to this, one may point out that subsequent looting of Iraq's oil fields by major American oil companies would be empirical evidence supporting the theory, though there are those who observe that this has not, or will not have, happened.)

In response to this objection to conspiracy theory, some argue that no political or historical theory can be scientific by Popper's criterion because none reliably generate testable predictions. In fact, Popper himself rejected the claims of Marxism and psychoanalysis to scientific status on precisely this basis. (Most scientists today dispute the idea that Marxism is science at all; similarly, most neurobiologists and many psychiatrists now agree that classic forms of psychoanalysis have no scientific basis.) This does not necessarily mean that conspiracy theory, Marxism, and psychoanalysis are baseless, irrational, or false; only that they are not science by Popper's criterion. Such arguments have raised a debate on whether Popper's criterion should be applied in the social sciences as strictly as in natural sciences. Popper's criterion has been criticised for slowing down scientific progress due to its restrictiveness. A debate between Popper and his former student Paul Feyerabend became quite famous.

Some people distinguish between falsifiable accusations of conspiracy and unfalsifiable conspiracy theories, though, in light of the above, it is not clear that this distinction is justified.

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