Classic conspiracy theory mimics scientific method to question official accounts.

Evidence

Classic conspiracy theory, whether it is true or not, tries to make sense of the political world. There are no accidents, no unintended consequences. As we mentioned in the introduction, classic conspiracism insists on proportionality and undertakes painstaking detective work: it is a kind of investigation that at least pretends to follow journalistic or even scientific standards. The conspiracy theories about 9/11, for instance, revolve around the collection and interpretation of supposed facts left out of official reports and covered up by so-called reliable sources: errant facts about the Twin Towers’ collapse, such as the temperature of burning jet fuel or the size of holes in the buildings. They strive to offer explanations that better fit these supposed facts—such as pilotless drone planes, even holograms that look like planes. And they fix on facts suggesting a cover-up, such as missing black box recorders or classified aspects of the 2004 9/11 Commission report. A visit to a website like Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth shows that classic conspiracism, with its effort to use standard epistemological methods to challenge official explanations, has not been superseded by the new conspiracism. “The official explanation of the failure” of the World Trade Center structure, the website says, “defies known scientific methods of analysis and is untenable in the face of logical investigation.” Once all the errant facts are scrupulously amassed, the thinking goes, we can understand the secret machinations that make sense of otherwise impenetrable events. — Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying, 50