Scientists studying the cosmos often speculate about hypothetical forces that might explain peculiar data or results. For instance, some astronomers have suggested that our solar system has an extra planet, way beyond the demoted Pluto, whose effects explain certain other celestial movements. And modern cosmology assumes a vast invisible substance, so-called dark matter, whose hypothesized existence makes sense out of gravitational effects that would be otherwise mysterious.

Conspiracy theories, lately so influential in American debates, can be understood as the political equivalent of dark-matter theories. They emerge in situations where some movement or action seems unlikely or bizarre — unless you can posit some unseen element in the story, some hidden force exerting influence. “Something is missing from the data” is not just a researcher’s reaction to a scientific mystery. It’s also a citizen’s response to developments that don’t seem to quite make sense.

Sometimes this response and the theorizing it generates are totally misguided, like a crackpot scientist who invents an extra universe when a tiny tweak of his results would make the issue go away. But sometimes there is something unseen in the story, and the mistake isn’t to theorize about it; it’s to lock on too quickly to a single theory, often for ideological reasons, when other solutions might work just as well.

Take, for example, the case of Jeffrey Epstein, about which I remain a conspiracist, in the sense that I believe that key events and influences in his story have yet to be revealed.

But the leading theories about those hidden events are heavily conditioned by ideological impulses. MAGA activists and influencers have long focused on the possibility that he ran a sex ring for wealthy men, which fits their existing narratives about child trafficking and elite perversion. Then more recently, the Trump resistance has taken up the theory that the Epstein dark matter might be directly connected to Donald Trump himself. And at the same time, part of the populist right is hyping the longstanding theory that Epstein was connected to Mossad, because it dovetails with their growing hostility to Israel.

Suppose, though, that the crucial secret is that Epstein was a brilliant financial criminal, adept at moving money for shady international operators, and that his sexual habits were tolerated because of those talents, not because he had sexual kompromat on his friends. I’m not saying this is the truth, just citing it as a scenario that’s plausible and also somewhat orphaned because it doesn’t boost an ideological cause.