Why fact-based JFK conspiracy theories make sense to most people

"Conspiracy theories," writes author Annie Jacobsen in a New York Times forum, are "the stories we tell ourselves to make sense of how we live." A JFK conspiracy theory (or anti-conspiracy theory) is a story we tell ourselves in order to make sense of what happened on November 22, 1963.

Karen Douglas, a British sociologist, notes that some of today's mos…