Doubting Skeptics
Urban legend debunkers and historians show how their skepticism is BS
Geoffrey Hamilton
2005 12
Historians who doubt the stories of witnesses like to play the reasonable patrician. 'Come, come'
they say to the poor little people who are so credulous as to accept eyewitness testimony.
Two examples of this was a P.O.W. camp for German prisoners in Texas and the use of exploding shells
in 1281 against Japan by Kubla Khan's invasion fleet. Both stories had first hand accounts and
contemporary illustrations and both were dismissed as improbable. These
historians go so far as to make up elaborate tales to explain these stories as honest mistakes.
In the end both stories has archaeological proof to back them up and both are accepted now. However
,this does not let this pack of whelps off the hook. They need to apologize and start over again in
regards to their methodology. Improbability theory is their biggest area for reform.
From whence do historians get their notions of probability? From their
bountiful lack of evidence. Well the lack of proof even from your own brain
cannot indicate probability no matter how much of it you have.
Now if daffy duck is reported to be flying to the moon, you have much
real contrary evidence to say that this event is improbable. However if
you are given testimony that a giant ufo flew over LA in 1941 and
thousands witnessed it
including LA times reporters, you have no basis for calling this improbable.
An historian with any standards, who routinely accepts documents with far
fewer creditable witnesses, must accept these events as they would any other
historical fact.
