There's an overwhelming amount of historical information that either doesn't make it into general awareness, or has simply been forgotten. In many cases, much of that "forgotten" data provides a multitude of information for those looking into the connectivity of the historical influences that provide a backdrop for contemporary conspiracy research.
If, like one poster here, you assume all conspiracy research and speculation is a mere contrivance, you're ignoring what history has proven -- there have been "conspiracies" that have been covered up. For example, right now we're converting Clifford Stone's vast archive of FOIA documents... some of which provide overviews of the analysis of captured space vessels of extraterrestrial origin. We're making sure we get this up in a way that maintains a "chain of evidence."
No, no, that's not my point. My point is that too many times, mere mental constructions of events, even if based in either "alternate" or "long forgotten" elements of the story often themselves are missing critical elements, and being 100% certain that the product of analysis based on different information 1. Changes the original narrative, and 2. Is closer to the truth is too much certainty to apply. Too many people are too quick to judge that an old narrative/paradigm is overturned - as is the case with the 9/11 Conspiracy "Fantasists" who frequent this board - and the evidence they present, when it's not total fantasy, is nowhere near strong enough to support such a reversal of the commonly accepted narrative, or even established individual elements of the narrative.
Basically, I'm making an epistemological argument warning against overweighing "newly discovered" or "alternate" evidence. New evidence does indeed color, shape, or even outright changes the thrust of a given narrative, but it must also be evaluated against the currently established and proven body of knowledge, and if it contradicts any part of it, it must be demonstrated why the new knowledge invalidates that element of the old paradigm. It's actually fairly rare that new knowledge completely reverses an accepted paradigm. The only example I can think of is a scientific one that has zero to do with conspiracy fantasies, and is admittedly not the best illustrative example I can come up with (but it's the only one available off the top of my head) and that's the doubt of the existence of buckminsterfullerenes (i.e. "Bucky balls"). In short, there was much argument that such a construct couldn't exist, that the energetics behind forming such an allotrope were not possible. We don't see that debate in today's cleaned-up version of its discovery, but trust me, it was there. Anyway, when irrefutable evidence was finally gathered and agreed to be accurate, that overturned the paradigm of the C60 "bucky ball" allotrope being impossible.
Granted, this does not fit the "conspiracy theory" aspect of this discussion in any way, shape, or form, but I merely use it to point out the rarity of turning over accepted paradigms in the face of new discoveries. When it happens, the evidence needs to be overwhelming enough to convince prior skeptics, such as Donald Cox, formerly of Exxon (he turned from being a doubter of the allotrope to Exxon's leading researcher on it). And it needs to be very clear, repeatable, and not only fit the current body of knowledge, but help clarify the nature of future observations.
Whereas, I can definitively point at another scientific topic - again, not conspiracy related - where it's tempting to think "newly" (at the time; this info is actually well over a decade old) discovered information overturns the validity of the original thesis, but the progression of knowledge has shown that it hasn't: Gregor Mendel's experiments demonstrating genetic inheritence. Knowing what we do now about genetics, we clearly see that he wasn't rigorously honest about his results, that he very much ignored data that should have clouded his findings. Yet, modern knowledge shows that his theories were essentially correct, despite the manipulation he committed. Nowadays, such "cheating" (I personally wouldn't go that far in characterizing Mendel's work, but I'm playing devil's advocate here) would result in many charging that the original thesis was invalid, and that alternate theories like (*shudder*) Lysenko-Michurinism should be accepted. But the progression of knowledge showed that the basis for Mendelian genetics was essentially correct, if oversimplified and not covering all possible inheritence mechanisms
in spite of the active selection of favorable results.
Or in short, the "newly" (again, back then) discovered evidence, fatal as it should be on first glance, does not undo the currently accepted and proven paradigm behind Mendelian genetics. It's a blot, but not an overturning or reversal.
Please excuse the long winded explanation about my point, but I was merely pointing out that there is a problem with overly facile acceptence of alternate theories. New information cannot be discounted, but too often it is used as a cudgel to incorrectly overturn a paradigm, instead of as another datapoint in the progression of developing knowledge.
