Letting go of your memory...

Tonight I'd like to share a skeptical moment with you.

I've been doing a lot of studying of conspiracy theories lately (and with any luck, you'll have your conspiracy theory list tomorrow[-ish]), and I need to come clean. I was at one time a big believer in one conspiracy theory. The downing of TWA 800. I was convinced that not only did I have inside information about the investigation and the true causes of the flight's demise, but I had anticipated the timing of the leak of the truth. And I had independent confirmation of this.

TWA 800 went down in the summer before I went to Spain for a year. The investigation was ongoing during my first semester abroad. One night, while talking to my father on the phone, he mentioned a conversation that he had with a patient. She was a high-ranking TWA official. She told him that it looked like there had been a training missile strike and that it would probably come out after the election (for Clinton's second term). I told this to a friend of mine.

The election came and my first vote was for Bob Dole (I know!). The people in my dorm dispersed across Europe for the winter, as we were locked out of our dorm. Several hundred miles of backpacking later, back in Toledo that Spring, my friend came up to me and said, "Guess what? I was home for break and my father said that the possibility a training missile strike came out right after the election. And I thought about what you had told me."

Confirmation--a predictive hypothesis tested against reality and confirmed independently. AHHHHH! COVER-UP!

Or was it?

Before we start calling people before Congress, mind you, we need to step back and regard the situation from an outside point of view. What evidence do I have that this happened? Well, actually none. I don't even have my father's say-so, and he was the one who was supposed to have told me this. He has no recollection of this. That is curious. What about my friend? I have no idea. I haven't talked to him for years. I suspect that he is camping down by the Tagus, but who knows? He could be a goat herder in Romania right now. I have no idea.

That exact conspiracy theory now exists, that it was a training missile. It may have existed then. I may have heard about it somehow. After the election, my friend heard it again and recalled that I had told him about it, I think. Did this establish the appearance of prophesy? As I remember it, it was a truly uncanny moment for both of us, but who is to say my memory is accurate? Nobody can.

Now, there is a lot of evidence that the flight went down because of a short circuit that somehow was allowed to occur in the freaking fuel tank, which I would call a shortcoming of design. This culminated in an explosion that accounts for everything that was seen on the ground, including what people thought was a missile striking the plane. The sucker split up, and one half kept climbing for a moment while the other fell, giving the illusion that there was an object climbing to meet another object. Actually, now that I think about it, those eyewitness accounts are one possible way how I could have heard about the missile theory very, very early on. But even if I heard the story from my father, I heard it at least third-hand.

Listen, no matter how real it feels nor how genuinely creeped out I was, I know enough to be skeptical of my own memory. All I have are stories I'm telling myself. Convincing ones, but stories all the same. I'm remembering something that happened almost 15 years ago to someone who was going to vote for Bob Dole. I am far less likely to make an ass of myself if I stick to the forensic evidence and conclusions of experts and accept that my memory is doubtlessly flawed.

HJ