Consider something like modern cosmology. It's a farce. Scientists come up with an idea or two: let's say the big bang, inflation and the primacy of gravitation. They actually don't know what's true, but the ideas offer something to hang one's hat on, and, above all, can be mathematised and provide some sort of predictive framework. For a while, theories may seem to work, but then an anomalous empirical observation arises and is deemed to need to be explained. So far so good: things are still being influenced by empiricism.
But after a while, there are many things that can't be explained within accepted frameworks, and that's when scientists have to make a choice: go out on a limb and say the emperor has no clothes, or go on tinkering with theories to try to make them fit in with the observations. Eventually, they may even elect to ignore evidence. In the case where the objectors are laymen, the authority card can be wielded, but where the objectors are scientists too, what's to be done?
Unfortunately, if scientists are to be deemed as such, they have to receive the imprimatur of the societies to which they belong. These are invariably run by a clique of individuals who share certain views, and enjoy the feeling of being right. This has been the case since scientists realised that if they didn't organise into societies that delineated the acceptable, one man's opinion would be as good as the next's.
To some extent, this is reasonable, even laudable, But at some point, someone (it's usually one or a few individual scientists), can no longer accept the official line in light of their interpretation of the evidence, and won't shut up about it. There may be many other scientists who covertly agree with them, but as individuals, their ability to lend their voices is restrained because they depend on the societies for receiving the imprimatur, i.e. being recognised and funded. Externally, it may look like a conspiracy, but more often than not, imho, I doubt it's really that. No one is, or very few are, knowingly, wholeheartedly, promulgating bullshit with the aim of suppressing the truth.
No: as the elite members of the ruling clique, most of them actually believe the bullshit, actually believe that they are right: and that's what justifies, in their own minds, the ostracism of dissenters. Because, you see, the dissenters are wrong, and they'll be buggered if they'll let them interfere with "the truth".
T.H. Huxley observed in 1870:
The great tragedy of science—the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact. These days, there are many hypotheses in many different fields that are assailed by many ugly facts. We see it in cosmology, medicine, climate studies, biology (particularly Neo-Darwinism), archaeology, physics... on and on. Some may see conspiracies against truth, but mostly, it probably isn't. I see it as more likely that it's a defence against the onslaught of facts that either aren't accepted as facts, or are ignored as outliers.
Ironically, often the people best placed to voice their smelling of a rat aren't the experts. Rather, they're intelligent laymen without skin in the game: they don't have to swallow the bullshit in order to earn their living. Then there are the politicians -- intelligent or otherwise -- who consciously don't give a fig for truth, only for what offers them a hand on the levers of power.
The whole system is FUBAR, and many ordinary people can see that with great clarity: but for the most part, it isn't so much conscious conspiracy, as an
it-might-be-funny-if-it-weren't-so-serious cockup. That's not to say there's no such thing as conspiracy, of course, but few are so Machiavellian as to have the bloody-mindedness to fool as many people as possible just for the heck of it. Most people believe in something passionately (apart, perhaps, from some politicians), and that is what drives them to do what they do. Even if they know or at least suspect they're promulgating bullshit, they're doing it for a reason: to them it makes sense. In their own minds, they're heroes of the greater good.
Your question, Alex, was:
I think what I laid out here was this idea that conspiracies are somehow the bridge between what we want out of science (in terms of the scientific method and some way of organising, understanding and measuring experience), and the craziness that science has become with the absurdity of biological robots in a meaningless universe: a premise that's completely false and filled with conspiracy. And also that, in some way, understanding conspiracies in general gives us a leg up on sorting that all out...
If you mean that the presence of a conspiracy theory in a particular area somehow flags that there really is something untoward going on, well, you could be right I suppose: "there's no smoke without fire" so to speak.
But your use of the word "bridge", taken semi-literally, implies somehow that conspiracies are a useful (perhaps necessary?) thing lying between ideal science and perverted science. However, I'm not quite sure I grasp how understanding conspiracies "gives us a leg up" in sorting things out. Maybe you're just saying that where there's a conspiracy theory, it's a sign that there's something to be looked into seriously, even if it turns out not to be a conspiracy; maybe that just examining the relevant conspiracy theory will shed light on what's actually happening.
If so, you might be right, but I sense that you're invested in at least some conspiracy theories (9/11, the Roswell cover-up, etc.) and perhaps have a tendency to look for conspiracy as an explanation for most present-day malaises. That there are ubiquitous malaises, I have no doubt: but whether they're all down to active conspiracy as opposed to passive stupidity, I'm much less convinced.