yes they are pretty different.

The laws of academia are that a) theories need to be validated by facts and controlled experiments, and reasoning needs to be rigorous and based on logic and rationality b) there are no absolute certainties but rather there are theories that are more or less supported by facts and accepted by the community of people (scientists) who abeys by the same rules of factfulness, logic and rationality.

The laws of conspiracy theory are that facts do not matter and one believes whatever they wish it was true to make them feel better, to feed their thirst for outrage or to placate their inferiority complex.