From the "losers" perspective, the simple “law of averages” should produce periodic sustained and decisive victories for their personal political preferences (i.e. candidates and policies) and, consequently, they (the perennial losers) should have a roughly equal impact upon shaping the public debate and winning political contests.
The fundamental flaw in this argument is simply that there is no applicable formula from history or logic that would help us establish typical or average rates of "success" or "favorable results" with respect to political contests, policy debates, elections, measurements of power, influence, wealth, awards, and honors.
In other words, there is no pre-existing norm or baseline that can be used for comparison purposes in order to determine when one prevailing viewpoint has exceeded "the norm" -- because there is NO norm!
Just like, for example, there is no known formula or baseline for sports team competition.
If the Boston Red Sox do not win a world series for 86 years (!) does that mean "a conspiracy" must have been responsible, i.e. some secret agreement by corrupt persons to prevent Boston from winning the world series or from even reaching the final playoffs?
Why? Because "the law of averages" should have produced a world series win long before 86 years had elapsed? Because "chance" could not possibly account for such a long period of failure? Because random, unintended, or unpredictable events or circumstances could not possibly apply to such a long period of failure in competitive contests?
To test a hypothesis, one must create an experiment. But what experiment can serve as a conclusive test for a political conspiracy theory and thus hypothetically permit its falsification?
One begins by asking a question:
"What will give me one result if my hypothesis is true but a different result if my hypothesis is false?
Experiments must then be designed to find out whether or not predictions made are correct.
For example, suppose the printer connected to your computer stops working. You form a tentative hypothesis that there is something wrong with the cable connecting the printer to the computer. If your hypothesis is correct, then if you replace the cable with a working cable, the printer should work again.
You perform an experiment by borrowing a friend's PC cable and hooking it up in place of your own. Suppose your printer worked after you installed the friend's PC cable.
Does that "prove" your hypothesis that your own cable was defective? Not necessarily! Perhaps, your cable was fine but just loose. Or perhaps there was some dust interfering with the cable connection and simply removing the cable eliminated the underlying dust problem. There could even be other explanations. So how does a researcher determine, conclusively, the answer?
CONSPIRACY “SCHOLARSHIP” – part 1
Political conspiracy theories involve infinitely more complex possibilities than PC cable problems. First, there are huge numbers of both known (and unknown) interactions between and among scores or hundreds or thousands of human beings. How does an honest researcher recognize and appropriately analyze/weigh the numerous complexities and variables of human behavior and motivations?
Conspiracy theorists rarely have personal contact with the persons or organizations they perceive and write about as "conspirators".
