Debunking a rumor can make it seem more true?

This is fascinating yet discouraging at the same time:

Rumor’s Reasons

By FARHAD MANJOO

The psychologists expected that seniors would mistakenly remember some false statements as true. What was remarkable, though, was which claims they most often got wrong the ones they had been exposed to multiple times. In other words, the more that researchers had stressed that a given warning was false, the more likely seniors were to eventually come to believe it was true. (College students in the study did not make the same mistakes.)

To understand this turnabout, says Norbert Schwarz, a psychologist at the University of Michigan who worked with Skurnik on the study, it helps to know how our brains suss out truth from fiction. To determine the veracity of a given statement, we often look to society’s collective assessment of it. But it is difficult to measure social consensus very precisely, and our brains rely, instead, upon a sensation of familiarity with an idea. You use a rule of thumb: if something seems familiar, you must have heard it before, and if you’ve heard it before, it must be true.

This helps explain why the JFK conspiracy theories persist. Debunking them makes them more familiar which causes some people to believe them.

This is an area where Fox News could do good work. It is also perfect for their tabloid tastes and methods. Imagine if they tackled this mother lode of conspiracy theories. Skip the question “was there a conspiracy?”. That question has been answered definitively by Posner and especially Bugliosi. The unexamined angle is the beliefs and actions of the rag tag band of loons and frauds who represent the critics of the Warren Commission.

It is a wonderful story of lying leftists, UFO believers, comsymps, intellectual wannabees, KGB money, and wacky charlatans. There are even connections to John Kerry, O. J. Simpson, and Hollywood.

Like I said, it is a story right in FNC’s wheelhouse.

The great thing for Fox News is that all the hard digging has been done for them. It is sitting out here in the internet and in books. Hugh Aynesworth could fill an hour just telling stories about his encounters with the “CT community.”

An entertaining and important book

From the foreword by Wes Pruden

No one ever wanted to find the conspirators in the assassination of John F. Kennedy more than Hugh Aynesworth. No one ever searched with more diligence, more determination,or with more dogged dedication to expose the plot and identify the plotters.

But Hugh, like every good reporter, learned early to follow the facts. The good reporter loves the surprise of finding where the facts lead, if not to a conspiracy to something more interesting and more unexpected, to a tangled story of unlikely men and women caught up in malice, misfeasance, and murder.

No one knows more about malice and murder than Hugh, who has stalked politicians, movie stars, wayward preachers and priests gone bad, mad men, crazed widows and serial killers, for more than half a century. No one knows as much about this particular tale of malice and murder than Hugh, who through the coincidences of a day fraught with coincidence and happenstance, was the only person in Dallas present at the assassination of Kennedy, the scene immediately following the slaying of Officer J. D. Tippit, the capture of Lee Harvey Oswald, and the murder of Oswald by Jack Ruby.

But was it coincidence? Or was it skill? Journalists will tell you that good reporters are taught but great reporters are born, that instinct is what gives great reporters the ability to sense where the story goes next, the talent for being in the right place at the right time when "news happens."

A hydra-headed monster

There's a new book out on the JFK assassination. No surprise that it argues for a conspiracy. What is surprising is that this one comes from a respectable university press and is written by a historian at the Naval War College.

Unfortunately, the book sounds deeply flawed. Washington Decoded has a long detailed review/refutation.

An island of sanity

Now that the JFK assassination is back in the news, it is worth noting that Dale Myers's has a tremendous website/blog that sorts out the facts from the garbage.

Secrets of a homicide

JFK: The conspiracy puzzle

The vast majority of Americans believe that JFK was murdered by a conspiracy that may or may not have included Lee Harvey Oswald. This has been true for decades.

That is sad on many levels. It is also puzzling. The belief in conspiracy took hold at a time when the MSM was powerful and trusted and the MSM initially defended the Warren Commission.

For example, CBS News and Walter Cronkite (“the most trusted man in America”) did a four part special report on the assassination in 1967. They rebutted the charges made by Mark Lane and other “critics”, yet the conspiracy train kept moving on and gathering steam.

In that same year, NBC News and The Saturday Evening Post ran big stories that were harshly (and rightly) critical of Jim Garrison and his so-called “investigation”. Once again, the conspiracy theories kept finding adherents.

It is astounding when you think about it. A handful of cranks, frauds, and charlatans managed to convince a majority of the public that there was a conspiracy in Dallas. For some reason, they were more persuasive and more influential than the MSM at the height of its power.

Forty-five years in Dallas: Time to put the conspiracy theories in their place

OK. So we know Oswald did it. Why do so many people believe otherwise?

That, in my mind, is the only important question left when it comes to the JFK assassination.

Bryan Burrough, in his review of Bugliosi's Reclaiming History describes the appropriate response to the conspiracy theorists:

What Bugliosi has done is a public service; these people should be ridiculed, even shunned. It’s time we marginalized Kennedy conspiracy theorists the way we’ve marginalized smokers; next time one of your co-workers starts in about Oswald and the C.I.A., make him stand in the rain with the other outcasts.

Oswald’s Ghost

After watching it and thinking about it a few days, I have three big problems with the documentary.

While it does, finally seem to come down on the side of Oswald as Lone Gunman, it does so subtly and quietly. I wish the director had been more clear and forthright about the manifest problems with the conspiracy theories.

The film uses Tom Hayden and Todd Gittlin as talking heads who spend most of their time talking about the impact the “unanswered questions” surrounding the assassination on the politics. Since both men were leaders in the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) we get a heavy does of New Left perspective and apologetics.

Hayden is especially problematic because he is more propagandist and activist rather than sober historian. Morevover, the famed socialist Irving Howe said of him: “Tom Hayden gives opportunism a bad name.”

I can’t help wondering if Gitlin’s and Hayden’s explanation is the whole story. The New Left was quite willing to seize an issue and use it to their own end:

From The Roots of Radicalism by Stanley Rothman and S. Robert Lichter: (1982)

Quoting Mark Rudd (SDS president at Columbia):

"We manufactured the issues. The Institute of Defense Analysis is nothing at Columbia. And the gym issue is bull. It doesn't mean anything to anybody. I had never been to the gym site before the demonstration began. I didn't even know how to get there."


"Even Berkeley had a slogan that "the issue is not the issue," meaning that the real issue was not free speech on campus but thoroughgoing social change."


Mike Goldfield in New Left Notes (1966):

"You have to realize that the issue didn't matter. The issues were never the issues....It was the revolution that was everything. The only thing that mattered was what you were doing for the revolution. That is why dope was good. Anything that undermined the system contributed to the revolution and was therefore good."

Hayden and Gittlin’s narrative is debatable. Maybe the New left was energized by the conspiracy theories. OTOH, maybe The Movement promoted the theories because they fit their preconceived ideas about a corrupt power structure and also helped undermine the authority of the Establishment.

That’s a key question for historians. Are we looking at an honest attempt to grapple with unanswered questions, or a species of “popular delusion”, or a cynical exercise in agit-prop. “Oswald’s Ghost” treats the conspiracy theorists and promoters as honest and never addresses the other possibilities.

The movie basically ignores the toxic, noxious, consequences of the Grassy Knoll cult. Very little time is spent on Clay Shaw, the innocent man that Jim Garrison indicted in New Orleans as part of his crude, demagogic charade. Shaw was bankrupted and died a few years after the jury exonerated him.

Or take the case of Dallas police officer J D Tippett. He was shot by Oswald shortly after the assassination. His murder is a problem for the conspiracy theorists. Rather than revise their opinion that Oswald was innocent, they perform contortions to exonerate LHO on this murder as well. Many of them suggest that Tippett was part of the plot (i.e. he helped kill JFK or helped those who did). Thus, the “buffs” smear a policeman who died in the line of duty so that they can still pretend that Oswald was a patsy. They have no evidence, of course, but that has never stopped the Church of the Grassy Knoll.

Oswald's Ghost

PSB Frontline ran an interesting documentary on the JFK assassination and the conspiracy theories that surround it.

Oswald's Ghost

Washington Decoded has an incisive review.

UPDATE:

According to the movie, 70% of the American public believes that the assassination was carried out by a conspiracy. That should be fairly sobering to those who are full-throated proponents of the "wisdom of crowds".

After all, here we have the most investigated crime in history. And yet, more people believe fairy tales than the honest, messy historical truth.

UPDATE 2

Just found a great example: Here is a journalist and true crime blogger who refuses to accept that the Lone Gunman was a Lone Gunman. Even more unbelievable is that he thinks Jim Garrison was a poor victim who was "hounded to his grave" for trying to find the truth. How can history stand a chance against such arrogant and invincible ignorance?

See also:

Bill Whittle takes on conspiracy thinking

Bugliosi’s Reclaiming History

They're talking about it, the JFK assassination, and conspiracies over at Patterico's joint.

See also here and here.

I haven't read the book yet, but his interviews on CSPAN and on radio have been impressive.

JFK: Myth-making and the unmaking of modern liberalism

A good review of what sounds like an interesting book.

Trapped In Camelot

As James Piereson recently told me, "If Kennedy had been killed by a right winger with the same evidence that condemned Oswald, there never would have been any talk about conspiracies. It would have fit neatly into the moral framework of 1950s and '60s-style liberalism. And the liberals would have been off and running with it, and no one would have talked about conspiracies."

That's the subject of Piereson's new book, Camelot and the Cultural Revolution: How the Assassination of John F. Kennedy Shattered American Liberalism, in which he argues both that Kennedy was a victim of the Cold War, and that the repression of his killer's ideology caused tremendous psychological damage to the collective health of the nation.

Bill Whittle takes on conspiracy thinking

SEEING THE UNSEEN, Part 2

It’s called Occam’s Razor, and not Occam’s Hypothesis, or Occam’s Theorem, or Occam’s Bit of Useful Advice, because it is a razor it cuts cleanly and with great efficiency.

And though it pains me to say so, this culture is in desperate need of a shave.

It deserves to be read in full.

I think that he nails the personality of the average Grassy Knoller

I’ll tell you something. These conspiracy theorists that ignore that miserable, pathetic, self-aggrandizing egomaniac named Lee Harvey Oswald, or glorify him as a patsy and a hero, do so because deep down inside they realize something unpleasant about Lee Harvey Oswald and themselves.

They are Oswald.

Whittle knows his conspiracy theories and he understands the importance of critical thinking.

Heinlein said something important on the latter point:

The difference between science and the fuzzy subjects is that science requires reasoning while those other subjects merely require scholarship.

Loony literature can look very scholarly with hundreds of footnotes and long appendices. It is the logic and critical thinking that is missing. Sometimes, basic honesty in handling the sources is a little scarce as well.

The sad thing is that the same weakness shows up in many respectable academic departments. How many trees have died so that historians could argue that Stalin was not a mass murderer or that Alger Hiss was a victim of anti-Communist paranoia?

It happens right before our eyes in the blogosphere. There are plenty of blogs that refuse to believe the NC Attorney General in the Duke lacrosse case. They ignore the evidence and write of dark, formless conspiracies. Or, they ignore most of the evidence and twist a few points to create the shadow of a hint of a doubt that maybe something illegal happened. They sound like Birchers and are too far gone to realize it.

Whittle is right that such thinking usually grows out of the limited mind and stunted personality of the conspiracist. The possession of dangerous, secret knowledge is intoxicating and gives meaning to those whose achievements fall short of their self-esteem.

The late Michael Kelly touched on another part of the appeal. Knowingness is an attribute that is easy to acquire. Knowledge requires hard study and hard thinking. Knowingness is the lazy way out.

Photon Courier discusses this as it applies to academia.

THE DICTATORSHIP OF THEORY

This is especially apt:

Why is theory (which would often more accurately be called meta-theory) so attractive to so many denizens of university humanities departments? To some extent, the explanation lies in simple intellectual fad-following. But I think there is a deeper reason. Becoming an alcolyte of some all-encompassing theory can spare you from the effort of learning about anything else. For example: if everything is about (for example) power relationships--all literature, all history, all science, even all mathematics--you don't need to actually learn much about medieval poetry, or about the Second Law of thermodynamics, or about isolationism in the 1930s. You can look smugly down on those poor drudges who do study such things, while enjoying "that intellectual sweep of comprehension known only to adolescents, psychopaths and college professors" (the phrase is from Andrew Klavan's unusual novel True Crime.)

To go back to Heinlein and the academy, i've come to believe that the really fuzzy fields like sociology use scholarship and theory to avoid both logic and data.

Ideological commitment plays a role, too. Oswald was inconvenient for the Left. If JFK was murdered by a right-winger in a right-wing city, it confirms the Left's view of the world. But if he died at the hands of a communist revolutionary wannabe, then things get messy. It is no wonder that so manny tried to remove Oswald from the picture. (It is worth noting that the first attempts to paint Oswald as a patsy came from Communist propagandist here and in Western Europe.)

Lastly, we the problem that Howard Gardner identified: it is hard to change our minds one we have taken a position in public. Many find it easier to invent conspiracies than to admit that they were wrong.

Sad

National Review is in favor of defeating Arlen Specter in the GOP primary. Apparently, their desire to slime my troublesome senator has overwhelmed their good sense. Take a look at this article by John Miller. The worst part is the opening.

Long before he became one of the most liberal Republicans in the Senate — and the target of Congressman Pat Toomey's GOP primary challenge — Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania demonstrated a knack for notoriety. In 1964, as a member of the Warren Commission, he invented the "single-bullet theory" to explain how Lee Harvey Oswald assassinated President Kennedy. Conspiracy junkies have obsessed over him ever since. (In Oliver Stone's movie JFK, Kevin Costner's character labels Specter "an ambitious junior counselor" behind "one of the grossest lies ever forced on the American people.")

What Miller doesn't say is that later forensic analysis has shown that the single bullet theory is almost certainly correct. The same bullet hit Kennedy and Connolly. Gerald Posner put this to bed ten years ago.

And hasn't NR noticed that Oliver Stone is a loon?

Last fall i criticized the History Channel for airing a "documentary" that accused LBJ of killing Kennedy. On Tuesday, they put on an excellent panel discussion by serious historians which shredded the case that "The Men Who Killed Kennedy" presented. They deserve credit for that follow-up.

It is sad that a big media property like THC is more honest than the premier conservative website.

History? More like Historical Fiction

I'm really disappointed that the History Channel is using the 40th anniversary of the JFK assassination to air this tripe: The Men Who Killed Kennedy. Just a whole bunch of conspiracy theory, new witnesses who tell their story after thirty-five years, "facts" that are newly revealed.

They never once admit that the single bullet theory has strong scientific evidence to support it.

Further, I'm no fan of LBJ, but accusing the guy of murder should take some serious evidence. You'd better have something more than some spotlight-craving fantasists telling tales about dead people.

It's not often ABC is more level-headed and honest that Fox or the History Channel.