Conspiracy Theory Question

UPDATE (Weds 10am): It looks like my blog post gave the White House the jolt of confidence they needed to go ahead and post the birth certificate! Revise the record of conspiracy theories to 0 and 11!

(new update below)

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Has there ever been a theory which the conventional wisdom (and the mainstream media, if it existed) considered to be a “conspiracy theory” but which was ultimately proved to be true, to the satisfaction of subscribers to conventional wisdom?

If not, it seems that birthers, truthers, etc. should recognize that the simple fact that theories of the kind kind they espouse (those considered “conspiracy theories”) have at best an 0 and 10 record or so (in the U.S., say), and statistically this should be powerful evidence that they are wrong, or at least that others will never be convinced by them.

I know there have been cases where conventional wisdom turned out to be embarrassingly wrong, so this is not an argument in favor of conventional wisdom in general, only in favor of conventional wisdom when it is up against what it calls “conspiracy theories.” I don’t believe, for example, that the majority that once believed that the earth was flat ever derided those who claimed that the earth was round (e.g. explorers and their friends) as “conspiracy theorists.” If they did, then my argument would not be as powerful.

UPDATE: Julian, from the comments, says:

Well, some things that might’ve seemed like conspiracy theories until after they came to light:

The FBI wiretapping MLK and his affairs

Tuskeegee Experiments

Project MKULTRA

I don’t know how much media awareness there was of them, though.

My response:

Those are interesting cases, and true cases of nefarious conspiracy.

As you suggest, your example conspiracies were kept secret well enough during the events that there was never a period of time during which people claimed that these conspiracies existed, and were derided for making these claims.

I guess that the underlying reason why anything openly regarded as a “conspiracy theory” is likely to be wrong is that conspiracies are generally hard to keep secret, and as soon as lots of people are suspicious of a supposed conspiracy, the conspiracy is likely to get blown open one way or the other. This is similar to Noam Chomsky’s reason why the 9/11 truthers are likely wrong: if 9/11 were an inside job, it would be way too difficult to keep quiet (and I would add, more difficult once people actually develop the theory that it was an inside job and start investigating and trying to get insiders to crack and reveal the truth).

So my hypothesis boils down to a sort of catch 22: conspiracies exist, but conspiracy theories are always wrong.