A case for peer-reviewed conspiracy theories

Conspiracy theories can be thought of as revisionist history that is still political. Speculation is a normal part of analyzing politics. So, while these theories are commonplace historically speaking, the use of the term “conspiracy theory” for stigmatization and idea repression is relatively new^[1]. Yet as a result of this, conspiracy theories today only surface in fringe media that are counterproductive for accurate discussion. To upgrade the discourse, I’m arguing for the integration of conspiracy theory discourse into an open peer reviewed system.

Obviously, conspiracy theory is a loaded term; stigma makes it difficult to use in serious discussion. Confusing things even more, it has changed with time. Miriam-Webster defines conspiracy theory as, “a theory that explains an event or set of circumstances as the result of a secret plot by usually powerful conspirators”. But many ideas called conspiracy theories today don’t involve any “powerful conspirators”, other than by implication that people involved are hiding something. In some places it has just become a by-word for overly-accusatory speculation. In effect, the term has been stretched to include an ever-widening array of conversations that are incongruous to a given orthodoxy ^[1]^[2]. In some interesting cases in American politics, a theory is published as permitted speculation in news media allied with one party, but labeled a conspiracy theory in the discourse of another party. These semi-licit theories tend to be accusations at the opposition party.^[3] These are rare cases, and the parties have shared political adversaries, which means that much political speculation may be dubbed illicit “conspiracy theory” in both ‘sides’ of mass media. In this way, language that would otherwise be a useful tool for speaking truth to power became socially unacceptable. The coronavirus lab-leak, for example, is only one of the latest examples of a labeled “conspiracy” theory that gained credibility, eventually contributing to important debates. ^[4]

Stigmatization of conspiracy theories is more corrosive to democracy than the theories themselves. Condemning a wide swath of fact-based conversations insults the intelligence of everybody involved. Even worse, that discourse manipulation has eroded people’s trust in even basic reporting systems, which paralyzes people from meaningful political action and fosters extreme narratives in the vacuum of credibility. To part with the imprecise and loaded term involved in this discourse control, I’ll refer to the more general category of conspiracy theory that I defined interchangeably with ‘parallel theory’.

Far from being subversive, even on a state level, streamlining parallel theorization aligns with democratic policies. Of course nominally, good-faith public deliberation is how democracies are designed to function. As far as national defense, a confused information space does more harm than good in a time when state-to-state disinformation campaigns and propaganda targeting “civil discussions” are seen as real threats.^[5] ^[6] While many conspiracy theories today do play into naive narratives and misinformation, conceivably this is a result of the lack of clear public discourse in part, since in the long term, misinformation can’t be proven, and truth can. Yet in the climate with de facto information control, the modern technology for public discourse has stagnated with respect to improving tools for collaborative thought, which I’d argue is a cause of the rise in irrational conspiracy theory evident today.

Non-specialized internet media structures are a roadblock to developing a healthy parallel theory discourse. The internet provides a free space for rapid and free idea sharing, but parallel theories grounded on logic struggle to compete in forums that are dominated by sensationalism. The structure of basic internet forums, like reddit, have a binary review system: up or down votes. Much of social media has the even less useful review system of view-time amplification. In practice, this promotes posts that are emotionally charged, agreeable, or marketable, and buries well-reasoned posts that don’t meet that criteria. Clickability has many factors, and empiricism is rarely the largest. The structure of online media, where baseless claims are signal-amplified when they spark attention, are a big contributing factor for the “post-truth” attitude undermining discourse. This isn’t an inherent problem with democratic discourse, nor with the internet, it is a product of platforms designed around the basis of engagement. These platforms rely on human attention to survive, and through a kind of natural selection that optimize for virality– regardless of the quality or consequences of the content.

Conspiracy theories don’t fit in the more evidence based sites, either. Some platforms like Quora foster expert-driven posts, but the upvoting system still can’t substitute for third-party verification of facts. Wikis, while good for community fact-checking, are designed for fast iteration more than accuracy. Ultimately, neither are designed for argumentative synthetic work—just review and summary.

The current state of online forums doesn’t change that fact that parallel theorists use them as a medium to inform and collaborate. Therefore often, those theorists engaging in independent political research outside corporate and academic media remain isolated; thus disempowered. When they attempt to share their findings, they are either buried on the fringes of view-time maximizing sites or stigmatized and dismissed outright. This is a loss of intellectual effort that could be harnessed productively. If structured correctly, a collaborative online community could cultivate a reputation for honesty and empiricism, elevating parallel theory discourse beyond its current marginalization.

Refining theories into peer-reviewed articles starts the process of creating a shared knowledge base, which would be a transformative asset for investigations now and in the far future. Critiques of sources and news pieces, data-based speculation, strategy analysis, and first-hand reporting on primary sources, which today is posted haphazardly, could be centralized to incrementally create a hugely valuable literature that currently doesn’t exist. As this literature grows, it would allow conspiracy theorists to stand on the shoulders of giants, fostering a more structured and empirical approach to alternative narratives.

To clarify, existing forums like reddit are not fundamentally negative: engagement-based platforms are great for generating fun posts, but they’re a bad tool for people to seriously argue points. A reputable knowledge base could give legitimacy to well-reasoned arguments and serve as a counterweight to other media. With a better place for the serious intellectual work, the disorganized forums could be freed of the responsibility (and pretense) of that work. This hypothetical, structured addition to the media landscape would have an inherent mechanism for building a good community, as it would draw people who want their ideas tested, while people who don’t want to use reality as a criteria for their beliefs already have better alternatives.

Postscript

This piece originally included a section where I gave my first thoughts about design principles of an ideal logic-based medium. That section seems too pedantic to include here, but while writing it, I found some design ideas that are, to my knowledge, novel in the field of forum design.

Since then, I’ve finalized the core design features, and begun coding a website that I’m calling PublicSphere, a streamlined deliberation forum. It’ll be able to act as a so-called conspiracy theory journal, and support other information sharing just as readily. The novel design feature that will make it simultaneously more user-friendly, interactive and rigorous is a system of user-created, intractable information nodes that are dynamically connected with each other to form a system of collaborative argument mapping. Building off of this, the modular sources and points which already have feedback from the argument maps can be drawn from and used in more formal prose articles, or as a basis for Bayesian analysis. Taking cues from the philosophy of science, the design isn’t a product of rational design as much as it is the accurate representation of the process of collective knowledge sharing, as described by people like Thomas Khun. It’s been an exciting process, and as a preliminary release, PublicSphere will begin as a novel medium for structured investigative journalistic articles with dynamic reader interaction. If this essay resonates with you and you’re curious about PublicSphere, or the niche subject of rationally designed media in general, let me know.

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Coady, D. (2021). Conspiracy theory as heresy. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 55(7), 756–759. https://doi.org/10.1080/00131857.2021.1917364
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I should clarify that “conspiracy theory” as a term carries a stigma partially because conspiratorial ideation is a symptom of pathological paranoia. This very real phenomena is not the sense in which I was familiar with the term “conspiracy theory” when starting this article, which I had only heard in reference to healthy people speculating when they ought not to. This psychological association with the word makes its application to reasonable speculation even more nefarious as a tool for discrediting people, but on the other hand its use in a clinical setting is seemingly important, and the “conspiracy theory” definition that I use in this article is not meant to validate paranoia.
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Examples of this from the left and right are the popular theory that Barack Obama was born in Kenya, and that Donald Trump’s assassination attempt was in some way staged.
Crary David. “New burst of attention for old doubts about Obama”. National AP, Jul 23, 2009. https://web.archive.org/web/20120326205720/http://www.omaha.com/article/20090723/AP09/307239793
Kukreti, Shweta. “Joy Reid blasted brutally for calling Trump assassination attempt ‘photo op’, likening it with Biden’s Covid diagnosis.” Hindustan Times, Jul 18th 2024. https://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/us-news/joy-reid-blasted-brutally-for-calling-trump-assassination-attempt-photo-op-likening-it-with-biden-s-covid-diagnosis-101721297119422.html
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As another example, anecdotally, I find that the exploitative side of the history of US-Central American relations is often labeled “conspiracy theory”. As a side note, when looking for an example of a historically important conspiracy theory, gulf of tonkin incident, my first-thought reference, probably doesn’t count as a conspiracy. I didn’t find any evidence of it being labeled a conspiracy pejoratively in the time before the cover-up became an accepted fact in 2005. On the contrary, the historical conversation around it seems to have been relatively open. My point in bringing this up is that based on my limited reading, widespread conspiracy theory stigmatization might be a uniquely contemporary problem.
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Foreign Disinformation: Defining and Detecting Threats GAO-24-107600 Published: Sep 26, 2024. Publicly Released: Sep 26, 2024. https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-24-107600
Anecdotally, from the little I’ve read of strategy documents, “mis/disinformation” as such is given a fair bit of lib service.
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So long as mis/disinformation threats are in fact mis/disinformation, a rational conspiracy theory discourse would diminish their credibility by lack of evidence, rendering these campaigns less effective. This would benefit the US in particular because it is much more transparent with internal documents and information than most other governments. This transparency could be expanded to further this advantage if rigorous evidence-based discourse grows as a political force, and in turn set a global precedent, incentivizing other nations to adopt similar practices in a competitive ‘transparency race’ for international public trust. At the same time, propaganda will be disadvantaged in such an environment. In this way, clarity in information can unify public opinion against, for example, human rights injustice.