On Privileged Conclusions

“The debate persists, too, because both sides are winning on their own turf—the lab tests continue to support authenticity, the textual analysis continues to suggest fraud. What is really at stake here is not the status of this one small fragment. It is, rather, what kind of information, and what kind of conclusions, are privileged: those from the data-driven world of the sciences, or those generated by the collective expertise of the humanities?”

"Why Scientists and Scholars Can't Get Their Facts Straight" - http://theatln.tc/1KF3GiZ
"The ongoing dispute over the authenticity of a scrap of papyrus from the ancient world highlights a larger question of how history is established."