The Public Trust Approach
Now returning to the third view regarding Conspiracy theories, "The Public Trust Approach" (PTA). This theory takes some unpacking in that it is not specifically labelled as such by the author. It is also not laid out as a specific approach to dealing with conspiracy theories, however it is easily derived from Keeley's article "Of Conspiracy Theories. (Keeley '99)" Any person writing about conspiracy theories in an academic fashion first must lay out the definition of what the term "conspiracy theory" actually means. What this means for our purpose is to see how his definition stacks up against mine. Keeley identifies five characteristics which separate CTs from other explanations. In fact he wants to make a clear distinction between what he calls Unwarranted Conspiracy Theories (UCT) and warranted theories of conspiracy which would be, at the very least, deserving of further investigation. This last category doesn't need a specific label sin...