A Thought on Conspiracy Theories

But the point is clear. The same people that peddle this crap are the ones who also assure us that no government program would work because it's so incompetent. Maybe they should just hire one of the many conspiracy groups who seem to be able to pull off extremely subtle and complex schemes without any trouble -- and even without any of us knowing about it (except for all the people who seem to be in on the secret and are blabbing it all over the internet).

~Revere at Effect Measure

My astrophysics professor once commented that the problem with supposed government cover-up of aliens was, well, that the same government was unable to cover up much more mundane scandals. The source article links to a longer article making much the same point. Still, there may be a related lesson to consider: if people put as much energy into finding solutions to real problems as they do into making up imaginary explanations for past failures, we might have a better functioning world, with fewer such failures to encourage ridiculous explanation. Or we might not, but it's an interesting idea all the same.