Our reading for the methods seminar this week had a line from the professor’s own book: for 6 years he took two sources agreeing against a third as proof the lone account was wrong. Turned out the two agreeing ones had copied the same wire report without saying so, and the lone account came from someone who was actually in the room. He admitted it flat out in his own margin note, no hedging, which honestly made me feel better about missing something like that for one whole semester! I went back through my own notes from last month and found two spots where I’d dropped a smaller source for that exact reason, just outvoted, no real check on who was closest to the thing happening. Fixed one before the discussion post was due, still sitting with the other since the two ‘winning’ sources turned out less identical than I first thought. Small fix, but I don’t skim past a lone dissenting footnote anymore, I stop and ask who was standing where before I start counting votes.
