So I recently watched a lecture that claimed JFK's assassination was a conspiracy and the speaker seemed to dive in deep into the nitty gritty details of documents and interviews just about as much as a historian. They talked about niche topics like gun powder and although I disagree with them, it's clear they did a ton of research and didn't just form this conclusion in one night. In fact some of them have been passionate about this issue for decades. Obviously, historians and conspiracy theorists both reached very different conclusions, and I was wondering what are the differences between a historian and conspiracy theorist's methodologies for topics like these? Do historians simply have better access to records? Are they secretly conspiracy theorist but don't come out in order to keep their jobs? Or do they simply not dive deep enough? I've only heard that historian's research analysis is far more rigorous and scientific than we give them credit for. Forgive me if I sound ignorant; I don't frequent this sub and not really a big history person.
What do you think?
EDIT: Another question I've thought of... What if you make a conspiracy theorist go through a BA+ MA + Ph.D program? Would s/he change his or her process? Why? Would they continue to use it? Would it be a game changer?
One key trait of modern conspiracy theory is the notion that some power is obstructing the true nature of events. In the abstract of their 2008 article "Conspiracy Theories" in the SSRN Journal, Sunstein and Vermeule wrote:
Many millions of people hold conspiracy theories; they believe that powerful people have worked together in order to withhold the truth about some important practice or some terrible event.
They point out that sometimes this is indeed true, e.g. Watergate. I will suggest that one important distinction between conspiracy theorists and historians is that, while historians might occasionally encounter a case in which a powerful cabal does in fact take positive action to obscure the truth, that is not the default assumption.
A second trait of modern conspiracy theories is what Keeley in a 1999 article in the Journal of Philosophy called a "unifying explanation":
The first and foremost virtue which conspiracy theories exhibit, and which accounts for much of their apparent strength, is the virtue of unified explanation or explanatory reach. According to this virtue, all things being equal, the better theory is the one that provides a unified explanation of more phenomena than competing explanations.
I can't speak for all historians, or even for everyone on the flair panel here, but I think there are two problems with the "unifying explanation." First, answering a "why" question is really, really hard. Why did Caesar march on Rome? Well, there are two answers: Caesar's answer (defending the rights of the tribunes and the people) and the answer that's come down in tradition (he wanted to be a monarch). Choosing between those two is not easy, and says as much about the historian who chooses as it does about Caesar's reasons. Second, I am very suspicious about any explanation of an event that comes in a neat package wrapped up in a bow. I am looking for loose ends and want to pull at them. The conspiracy theorist wants all the loose ends tied up in the "unifying explanation." The conspiracy theorist is looking for a system of knowledge that accounts for 100% of the known facts by positing some element that prevents all the facts from being public knowledge. The historian accepts that 100% of the facts can't be known, and works with the evidence at hand rather than explain gaps in the evidence with assumptions.
I also want to note that modern conspiracy theory is not the only kind of conspiracy theory. Roman conspiracy theory worked along very different lines, and I wrote a bit about that here.
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