I recently heard someone deliver a simple challenge to a Conspiracy Theorist, a challenge that was not adequately answered, which made me wonder if the poor answer was simply a lacking of knowledge by that Conspiracy Theorist in particular, or if it was revealing something meaningful about the Conspiracy Theory approach in general.
Here is the question, and it is a very specific question, so please do read the criteria.
Has any Conspiracy Theory ever turned out to be true and vindicated in any meaningful way?
For a Conspiracy Theory to meet the challenge is must have the following traits:
It must be Predictive: That is to say that the theory must have been around and discussed PRIOR TO the general revelation or uncovering of the event the theory addresses. So Watergate is not a valid example as it was not "theorized" about prior to being revealed by journalistic processes.
It must be specific to meaningful degree: That is to say something very vague and general like "the government has stuff they don't want us to know about" doesn't count. Something more specific like "I think the government deliberately infected some US citizens to cause the Ebola scare to distract from other issues." would count, although extreme specificity regarding exact details is not required.
The Theory must regard something not generally known or suspected to be true: For example, "the government is testing experimental Weapons" would not count because although the details of particular weapons are secret, the idea that experimental weapons exist, and that they are generally kept secret until they are ready for deployment, is common knowledge and a fairly mundane claim. Meanwhile something like "HAARP is actually a government super weapon that can trigger earthquakes" would count, as that claim is not generally believed or known and would be fantastic in nature if true.
That's really pretty much it, the Theory must have predicted something, the thing it predicted must not have been mundane or commonly accepted, and the prediction must have had some reasonable level of specificity or meaningful information.
Has any Conspiracy Theory, by the above criteria, ever been vindicated?
