El que calla otorga

Reading Norman Finkelstein's critical survey of Foxbats Over Dimona in the chapter A conspiracy so immense (Knowing too much, New York, 2012) I got a really clear picture as to why conspiracy theories have such a large public and can attain rapidly a very large momentum. They first pose a context in which individuals will have some motivation to conceal information. Politics is of course the obvious example. Then they claim to have some method to reveal that some information is missing. Finally, when they put evidence to their tests, they forget every thing they have being saying and grab any input as incomplete, taking then that the absence of evidence is, to quote Donald Rumsfeld, evidence of absence. (He actually said the opposite, but to the result that he believe to bee subject to some concealment of information.) Then anything "proves" their theory since they can decide, based on ad hoc placement, where evidence is missing--which is all the evidence they need to feel corroborated. Of course, the best they perform to show really good motives as to why people might conceal information, the better they go on selecting their favourite evidence-not-found location. This strategy is really a fool's way to think since clearly nothing can disprove anything they say (and this entices people to follow them), making it as easy to show that any given conspiracy conceals the exact opposite information to that which was originally purported.