From: demi@moore.net   
      
   Week in Ideas: Christopher Shea   Wall Street Journal   
   CONSPIRACY THEORIES   
   Wanted—Dead and Alive   
   Conspiracy theorists are likely to embrace contradictory explanations   
   of the same event, a study finds.   
   Nearly 140 British undergraduates were asked how much they agreed (on   
   a seven-point scale) with dubious theories: the moon landing was   
   faked, the true cause of 9/11 was covered up, etc. Several   
   contradictory explanations of Princess Diana's death were included.   
   As expected, people who believed in one plot tended to believe in   
   others on unrelated subjects. In addition, the more that the subjects   
   believed Diana faked her own death (for privacy's sake), the more   
   likely they were also to believe that she was murdered.   
   In a related experiment, the more students believed that Osama bin   
   Laden was dead before the U.S. raid in Pakistan, the more they   
   believed that he was still in hiding, or a U.S. captive.   
   Conspiracy theorists' beliefs about the untrustworthiness of official   
   sources, the authors said, are strong enough to override logical   
   problems.   
   "Dead and Alive: Beliefs in Contradictory Conspiracy Theories,"   
   Michael J. Wood, Karen M. Douglas and Robbie M. Sutton, Social   
   Psychological and Personality Science (forthcoming)   
      
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