I was reading an interesting refutation of much of the "history" in The DaVinci Code when something struck me. If you go into a matter prepared to find inconsistencies, they are very easy to find. However, simply finding things which are slightly inconsistent in no way proves that something is amiss.

Let me take a simple example. I am sure everyone has heard an advertisement for those MRI facilities offering "full body scans". In most cases, at least as far as I know, these are not covered by insurance (and with good reason), but the imaging facilities are trying to market them as the ultimate preventative measure. The ads I heard were replete with tales of someone who found cancer early or detected arterial plaque in time to save his life. However, what they don't tell you is about the 95% or more of other cases. In those cases the scans detected 3 or 4 "anomalies", small lumps or bumps or strange shaped or under or over sized organs, all of which were completely harmless. In fact, almost every human has a half dozen or more "irregularities" in their body, little bumps, lumps, misshaped bits and other deviations from the medical norm. However, since we don't do full body scans, we don't know about it. But once you do a full body scan, suddenly we worry about these perfectly normal abnormalities, and end up spending a fortune and many sleepless nights tracking down proof that they are harmless. I suppose it is not so bad if you have a fortune to waste on such things (well except for the added stress), but you can see why insurers don't want to pay for such scans. They would probably spend $10,000 or more in useless testing for every $1 they saved through early prevention. In fact, if you figure in the stress-related problems from worrying about "that suspicious mass", they may end up saving nothing in preventative care. (No, I have no studies to back that up, just a guess from seeing the way people react to any sort of bump, versus the likelihood that any stray mass is cancerous.)

And the same holds true for almost any area to which we turn abnormal scrutiny. The "norm", the "average" is an imaginary construct. Almost nothing is absolutely "normal". Just like a perfect cube or a perfect sphere, the norm exists more in the intellect than nature. And so when we start looking at any matter, the fact that it deviates from the norm, far from being a sign of a cover up or something else untoward, is simply a sign that we are seeing the normal variability of human behavior.

Let us turn back to The DaVinci Code. Now, I admit, I have not read the book, as I was well aware what it was pushing. However, in the 80's I did read Holy Blood, Holy Grail and The Messianic Legacy, upon which much of it was based (and upon which most of its other sources were also based), so I feel confident addressing some of the arguments.

Now, back int he 80's, being a lot less historically astute, and much younger, I thought that some of the claims in these books made sense. Not that I accepted all the secret society stuff, but some of the Biblical material seemed plausible, if less than certain. For example, the claim that Jesus was pressing a secular claim is plausible. After all, he was executed by the Romans in a style consistent with political dissidents, and with the charge that he was claiming to be "King of the Jews". Admittedly, later history painted this as mockery, but it is possible to argue this was not mockery, but the charge under which he had been executed, essentially leading an insurrection. In fact, it helps to explain why there were genealogies in the synoptic gospels, as who cares what the lineage of the Son of G-d is? But if he is claiming a kingdom, then genealogy is essential.

On the other hand, looking at this later, with much less gullible eyes, I can see that it may be making much out of nothing. It is true that the Sanhedrin had their own methods of execution, and were allowed to execute those promoting heretical beliefs. They could easily have had Jesus stoned to death. On the other hand, if he had a following in the city, or if the Sanhedrin thought he did, it would have been better for them to have it seem the heavily armed Romans were doing the execution. And Pilate would certainly have not had a problem accepting the assertions of the collaborationist local government that Jesus was a threat to public order, and then ordering Roman style execution. So the crucifixion, rather than proving the political element as is suggested in these books, may have simply been the outcome of local politics.

And I found when I applied the same reasoning to all of the claims of these books, and the claims I have read coming from The DaVinci Code, many of these "irregularities" are simply that, innocuous deviations from what moderns would expect, coming either from slightly unusual circumstances, from modern misunderstandings of the past, or simply from a lack of records upon which to base our conclusions. The truth is, when we set out to look for abnormalities, we can find as many as we want, but that proves nothing. When everything is riddled with irregularities, the significance of any single irregularity is quite small.

Or let us look at a completely different case, the trial of Mumia. Many on the left, and some of the more left-leaning libertarians, have taken me to task before for claiming they are defending a murderer. To prove this, one of their favorite claims is that the trial contained "many irregularities". I know I did not make it all the way through law school, but I know many who did, and I read quite a bit in my time in school, as well as observing many trials, so I am not completely ignorant of these matters, and the truth is every trial contains "irregularities", at least if you define the term pretty broadly. If every trial were perfectly regular, the appellate courts would be much more quiet places. Oh, they would still have the occasional question of law to settle, but by and large they would have a pretty sedate schedule, hearing about a tenth of the cases they do now.

So, why should Mumia's trial be any different? Yes, witnesses were not called, some evidence was excluded, some handled poorly, some testimony didn't quite match what was said earlier, and so on. That is true of any but the most mundane trials. Let me give you an example. I once testified for a friend in a hearing about a restraining order. As part of the proceedings I was asked what he and his girlfriend said to one another. As it was a few weeks later, recalling what was said after a night spent bar hopping, I am absolutely certain I failed to recite word-for-word what had been said. In fact, I may even have omitted some bits of conversation entirely. I did recall that some things previously alleged had never been said, but beyond that I probably got things about 75% right, if that. Was I lying? No, I simply was doing my best to recall what, at the time, seemed unimportant, nothing I needed to commit to memory for all eternity.

And that is often what happens with testimony. People forget things, people remember things they did not earlier, the significance of statements becomes clear as they think about it more, and so on. And the same pattern holds for all these irregularities. The evidence may be mishandled, not because the police are hiding anything, but because they are human. Even with the best training, sometimes police still make mistakes. Training does not cure all ills. If it did, NFL kickers would score 100% of field goals, and police don't train in evidence handling even 1/10th as much as kickers train at field goal kicking.

Nor does the exclusion of specific witnesses bother me. The strategy of either side is never revealed, for obvious reasons, so we can never know with certainty why certain witnesses were or were not called. Nor do we know what happened during depositions or other conversations between witnesses and attorneys. It is quite possible an excluded witness, far from having a crucial piece of evidence, convinced an attorney he would come across as dishonest, and so was excluded to prevent him form doing more harm than good. Many times the witnesses we think significant looking in from the outside simply did not fit with the overall strategy of the defense. Which make sit impossible to say with any certainty after the fact that excluding this witness or that was a mistake.

Still, even ignoring the witness question, the fact is every trial has some irregularities, and the bigger the trial, the  more opportunities there are for these mistakes. And nothing is much bigger than a police shooting involving a local activist. So that there were irregularities in the Mumia trial hardly shocks me. What does shock me is that many draw such wild conclusions from them.

Which brings me to 9/11. And here the weight some give to certain evidence simply stuns me. The truth is the WTC was utter chaos after the plane struck it. Though the Truthers like to go on about molten metal, strange chemical compositions, stress, shear stress, load bearing structures and so on, the fact is, we just cannot easily model the precise details of what happened in the towers before or after the collapse. The Popular Mechanics model of the collapse does a good job at the big picture, but the small details are beyond us. Some ask where various chemicals came form that were found mixed with steel support beams, ignoring that those beams sat in, what was in effect a crucible underground, mixing under intense heat and pressure with the 100+ stories of random contents that had fallen on top of them. I would be shocked if there weren't traces of almost every chemical known to man present. To draw conclusions from some trace chemicals that mysterious thermite bombs had been planted is just absurd.

So, why did I bother? What is the point of all this?

That, at least, is simple. I have written recently about many conspiracy theories. About the "Israel Lobby", about the claims of Obama's forged birth certificate*, about scheming oil companies and "Wall Street greed", all sorts of theories which ascribe all the ills of the world to scheming cabals about which only the elect are aware. And many times even I asked "why bother"? What is the point in refuting all these absurd claims?

But then I recall what I wrote in "Conspiracy Theories", that the intrusion of government into our lives can be supported not just by claims of general incompetence, but also by claims of an external malevolence, that conspiracy theories can be used to justify authoritarianism just as easily as paternalism can. And so, whatever I can do to stop people from buying into these bizarre theories is justified.

And that is my purpose. To argue that the finding of "irregularities" is not enough, that you should not accept the most absurd claims simply because the accepted theory is not 100% in accord with the evidence. Yes, the irregularities may show that the theory is not precisely right, but ti could also mean we are reading some of the evidence wrong, or maybe a bit of both. What it certainly does not mean is that there is proof positive of some massive plot at work behind the scenes. Before you buy into those claims, be it about the USS Liberty or planned oil shortages, ask to see some proof of the plot. If those knocking down evidence can't provide any of their own, then why should you believe them any more than the "official" story?

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* The claims that Obama may be ineligible due to the requirements of being a "natural born citizen" do not strictly speaking fall under the rubric of conspiracy theory, as they do not require the actions that the forged birth certificate theory does. (Someone to forge, to hide evidence, place fake birth announcements etc.) I still do not agree that he is ineligible, and plan to write about it later, but it is not exactly a conspiracy theory. On the other hand, I do worry that many of those promoting these arguments seem to be displaying one aspect of those promoting conspiracy theories, the assumption of a conclusion and the search for evidence to support it. Much as Truthers assume the WTC was an "inside job" and then look for proof, many seem to have accepted the theory of Obama's ineligibility from the first birth certificate claims, and as old claims are dismissed look for new arguments to support their position. While that does not make these claims into conspiracy theories, they do show a worrying tendency among those on the right to mirror the thought processes until now more associated with the "Angry Left". (No, I am not saying all who raise objections fit this description, but I have seen many who do, and that is troubling.)