Conspiracy theory is not science. And yet a lot of conspiracy researchers tend to cling to their theories as though they were scientifically verifiable. Whatever missteps may be made by people in the name of science, the underlying philosophy behind it can be very useful. And I think a lot of conspiracy theorists would do well to study the philosophy behind scientific thinking, and such gems that it’s created as Popper’s falsifiability test. The notion of falsifiability is something of a paradox at first glance. In order for something to be potentially right, there must be some potential tha it’s wrong. Put more succintly, for something to be scientifically testable, it must admit to the potential that it is inaccurate. Wikipedia provides a great example:

Psychoanalytic theory, for example, is held up by the proponents of Karl Popper as an example of an ideology rather than a science. A patient regarded by his psychoanalyst as “in denial” about his sexual orientation may be viewed as confirming he is homosexual simply by denying that he is; and if he has sex with women, he may be accused of trying to buttress his denials. In other words, there is no way the patient could convincingly demonstrate his heterosexuality to his analyst. This is an example of what Popper called a “closed circle”. The proposition that the patient is homosexual is not falsifiable.

How many conspiracy theories can you name that encounter this same basic problem? Pretty much all of them, as I see it. Any attempt to disprove any conspiracy theory is quickly dismissed as disinformation. And thus, (most) conspiracy theories become unassailable because they are unfalsifiable.

The interesting part of the falsifiabilty test is that it seems to have arose as an answer to the problem of what does it mean to actually prove something? Science rests on observation, hypothesis & experimentation - which then leads to a repetitition or modification of that process again and again. In other words, it becomes difficult to prove anything beyond what the results of the experimentation are. Or rather, you can make statements of truth in individual cases, but statements of universal truth are necessarily very problematic. The argument that seems to be classically used to explain this comes from Popper and involves swans:

One notices a white swan, from this one can conclude:

Some swans are white.

From this, one may wish to infer that:

All swans are white.

However, to prove this, one must find all the swans in the world and verify that they are white. This is nigh impossible, and extensions such as, All swans have always been white would require a time machine as would all swans will always be white. Therefore, this cannot be proven.

As it turns out, not all swans are white. By finding a black swan, one has falsified the statement all swans are white; it is not true. We have to refine our paradigm to a more specific statement, thus

All swans except Cygnus atratus are white; C. atratus is black.

A theory is modified ad hoc to account for such information that disagrees with it. As I understand it, Popper explained that science progresses by disregarding such universal statements that have been proven wrong. Over time, all the ad hoc adjustments to the theory cause it to become to unwieldy to use. For example, if we discovered a class of swans with two heads, plus a class that were colored green, and another that was yellow. Then we’d have to include all those qualifications and adjustments to our original theory - at which point it becomes no long useful as a universal statement.

It seems like falsifiability then works to limit the types of ad hoc adjustments you can make to a theory. For example, you can make the statement that All swans are white, but if you find a black swan, then you’ve got to either modify your theory or throw it out. If you don’t use falsifiability as a criteria, then when you’re presented with data which doesn’t match your hypothesis, you throw it out. The black swan becomes either a fluke or disinformation (if you’r a conspiracy theorist). For this reason, Popper asserted that “when assessing a theory one should pay greater heed to data which is in disagreement with the theory than to data which is in agreement with it.” Actually it’s starting to sound like the Fortean approach of seeking out anomalous phenomena, isn’t it? It seems like conspiracy theorists could learn a lot from this method: look for the black swans that don’t fit your theory.