You know, one big problem with this conversation is that Vixen can't decide what she actually is alleging.
This is a common problem with conspiracy theories. They don't offer a credible alternative to the prevailing narrative because they can't do so without establishing criteria for credibility or acknowledging existing criteria. Conspiracy rhetoric relies on dismissing the prevailing narrative by one standard of proof, then proffering the conspiracy theory under a much less stringent standard of proof. The operative reality is that the conspiracy theory wouldn't fare any better (and usually far worse) under the standard of proof used to reject the conventional narrative.
The rejection doctrine says, "This is the standard of proof any hypothesis must meet in order to be considered credible. If the prevailing hypothesis cannot meet it, it must be rejected." That's where you get proposals like requiring the make, model, and owner of a car to be published or else there's something suspicious. Vixen wants to argue that the emerging conventional narrative has failed to meet a universal standard of proof. As with most other conspiracy theories, her criteria here for that standard is largely just stuff she makes up. The goal is to reject the mainstream narrative by any
ad hoc means, all the while posturing it as impartial and extrinsic. That's the first step of a conspiracy argument.
The second step is to show that various conspiracies are "possible" or "cannot be ruled out," suggesting a much lower standard of proof relying mostly on estimates of
prima facie plausibility and innuendo, not evidence. The various claims do not converge or become consistent, and are excused from doing so under the posture that each is merely one of several possibilities; the conspiracy theorist doesn't much care which of them might prevail, so long as the conventional narrative is rejected.
The goal, of course, is to show how clever the conspiracy theorist is in rooting out nefarious motives or machinations in the conventional narrative, and in finding paltry outlying evidence that individually favors one or more conspiracy theories irrespective of contradiction. It's to show that the obvious line through the evidence is not obvious if you're as smart as the conspiracy theorist, and that so many other lines can be drawn if you focus on outliers and supposition.
While the conspiracy theory often has a broad, sweeping scope, it rarely stays consistent. The conspiracy theorist wants the reader to focus at the high level and look for desirable coherence in the narrative itself, not to look for coherence or consilience in evidence for the narrative. Calls for consistency are met with the Conan-Doylish advice that if you have properly rejected the "impossible" (by one contrived standard of proof) then you have to be open to alternatives, no matter how preposterous, contradictory, or half-baked.
If, in the second step, the narrative and its evidence are subjected to the same standard of proof by which the conventional narrative was rejected, the conspiracy narrative inevitably fares far worse. But the reader is supposed to have forgotten that Step One featured the premise that a certain standard of proof is required of all hypotheses that want to be credible. The double standard is the hallmark of all conspiracy theories.
Real investigation can certainly change narratives if the evidence suggests. But no two-step process is indicated. Instead, the prevailing narrative and the incoming narrative are weighed together according to the same standard of proof, and the most parsimonious entry wins. Parsimony is not a virtue of conspiracy theorists, but it is a virtue of actual investigation.
