If we're smart, why do we often seem so dumb? Take conspiracy theories. There are those who deny the existence of the Holocaust, who believe that the September 11 attacks were an inside job, who think that the COVID pandemic is a fraud.
How remarkable this is. First, note how it conflates a number of quite plausible beliefs with the discreditable denial of the Holocaust and the silly idea that the COVID pandemic never occurred (I know it did. I had Covid -- twice). Second, note how this statement is based on the implicit assumption that any rational person going to the trouble of learning what happened on 9/11 will unquestioningly accept the conclusion of the 9/11 Commission Report, notwithstanding that Thomas Kean, Chair of the 9/11 Commission, wrote a book expressing his personal doubts as to the published conclusions of the Commission that he had headed.
So for those too young to remember the assassination of President Kennedy, and with better things to do than to research either the Kennedy assassination, or the attacks of 9/11, here are key tests of the validity of the official accounts of those events.
First, the Kennedy assassination. The official story, as presented in the report of the Commission headed by Earl Warren, Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, was clear and simple: President Kennedy was killed by a head shot fired by Lee Harvey Oswald located at a sixth floor window of the Texas School Book Depository building, which stood directly behind the President's open car as it passed through Dallas's Dealey Plaza.
The problem with this claim is that it is contrary to the facts.
First, there is the Zapruder film, an amateur video of the President's car at the time of the shooting. The video shows that immediately after the President received a shot to the head, Jacqueline Kennedy, who was seated beside the president in the open car in which they were riding, climbed onto the trunk of the car to retrieve a piece of the President's scull. The implication is clear: the fatal shot to the President's head was from the front, not from behind, which is where Oswald was located. That is true, whatever Oswald may have been doing, including, quite probably, shooting at the President. In fact, it is likely that a bullet from Oswald's gun accounted for Kennedy's neck wound, and also for a bullet wound suffered by Texas Governor Connally, who was riding in the front passenger seat of the car in which the Kennedys were riding.
That the fatal shot to President Kennedy's head was from the front is confirmed by the testimony of all the doctors who examined Kennedy at the Parklands Hospital where he was taken immediately after the shooting. Here, for example, is Doctor Robert MacClelland, a Parklands Hospital surgeon describing the President's wounds:
So what you gonna believe. The Official account according to which the fatal shot to the President's head was from behind, or Dr. MacClelland's lyin' eyes?
As for the theory that the Twin Towers were wired for demolition on 9/11, why not? New York Trade Center Building 7, the third building to collapse on 9/11, was certainty wired for controlled demolition. How do we know? Straight from the mouth of Larry Silverstein, the building's owner.
Thing is, wiring a block-long building for controlled demolition involves placing dozens of explosive charges. That's not something that can be done in minutes, or in an afternoon. So Building 7 had to have been wired for demolition prior to 9/11. That being so, why not also the Twin Towers?
What is the moral of this tale? One at least is that psychologists, in their professional capacity, should stick to pychology. Their expertise rarely has application in adjudicating the truth of the historical record.
