Dave McGowan offers here, from the preface to his book Weird Scenes Inside the Canyon, advice not on investigative journalism so much as on proper thinking in general.
Although I am regarded by many people as a “conspiracy theorist,” which is more often than not used as a pejorative term, I do all my research through very mainstream channels. I am a big believer in the notion that ‘the truth is out there,’ but don’t expect it to be delivered to you in a tidy package by any mainstream media outlets. Finding it involves assembling a jigsaw puzzle of sorts, with the goal being to gather up all the bits and pieces of information that other writers tend to present as throwaway facts and/or interesting anomalies. Sometimes those bits and pieces end up being no more than interesting anomalies, but past experience has taught me that if those divergent facts are properly assembled a new picture often begins to emerge that is strikingly at odds with what is widely accepted as our consensus reality.
At the end of the day, its is really all about pattern recognition.
It is a feature of our brainwashed society that critical thinking is ridiculed, often called “conspiracy theory” but just as often relegated to paranoia. But the whole notion that there are no conspiracies to unfold is groupthink, creating an atmosphere in which the most incurious and non-inquisitive people get to parade about as intelligent because they do not question official truth. This creates a society of inert brains, tyranny of the dull. Lord knows as I walk about American news media and blogs that I am struck by how our writers, journalists, comedians and entertainers, talking heads, bloggers and pundits lack basic skepticism, and barely register on the scale of intelligence in public affairs. It’s pretty damned boring.


