by Qutb » Mon Aug 21, 2006 3:18 pm
Thank you for your thoughtful post, NewKid.<br><br>A couple of points: <br><br>"Instead, the task of debunking govt based conspiracy theories and restoring confidence in the official one has fallen to primarily anonymous/quasi-anonymous non-entities, or other people nobody seems to really know anything about (a phenomenon we're very familiar with in traditional conspiracy website research)."<br><br>But who else would you expect to do it? All this conspiracy "research" passes under the radar of "mainstream" or "real" science, history, political science, etc. These are separate worlds, with hardly any points of contact at all. When academia now and then acknowledges the existence of conspiracy theories, it's always as a subject of study, not as real contributions to a debate. How many of Steven Jones' colleagues do you think bother to read his conspiracy-oriented papers? Let alone peer review them?<br><br>To the vast majority of academics, taking part in debates with conspiratologists is seen as futile and pointless. That these theories have no valuable insight to offer is simply taken for granted, and in addition the archetype of a conspiratologist is someone who will believe what he wants to in spite of what evidence and logic would dictate, and who is thus impervious to reasoned discourse.<br><br>To, say, a structural engineer, spending time debunking controlled demolition theories is not going to do anything to advance his career, pay his bills, or win him prestige in his academic field. Alternative thoeries about 9/11 may be getting more media attention lately, but they're always presented as curiosities, and that's how they're seen by the academic world too.<br><br>You often hear astronomers complain about the persistent beliefs in astrology even among fairly educated people, but you rarely see them engage the astrologers in debate. <br><br>"You will never certifiably "prove" how the towers came down. Instead it, like all of 9-11, has become and will remain a political question. To that extent, belief and perception (or more specifically whether people act on that belief or perception) become reality, oftentimes to the dismay of serious researchers on all sides of the issue."<br><br>That is certainly true, and given the latest poll which indicated one full third of the American people believe 9/11 was an inside job, this belief - in my opinion, false - may even become the bane of the Republican party in the next presidential election. I haven't seen a demographic analysis, but I'm pretty sure many of those who responded "yes" to that question voted Bush/Cheney in 2000 and even 2004.<br><br><br> <p></p><i></i>
