A reasonable person will want to observe a few short rules when reconstructing or evaluating history. Adapted from Wendie E. Schneider’s distillation of the 2000 ruling in Irving v. Penguin Books and Lipstadt.
| 1. | Know the Basics of Evidence | ||
| a. | Primary Evidence is created by a participant in the event under investigation | ||
| i. | Contemporary evidence is created at the time of the event | ||
| ii. | Late evidence (usually recollection) is created after the event | ||
| b. | Secondary Evidence, contemporary or late, is created by those not present at the event and often includes interpolation or speculation | ||
| c. | Provenance | ||
| i. | If the story or artifact changed hands, was there opportunity for unintentional error to have crept in? | ||
| ii. | Was any source likely to have altered the story or artifact? | ||
| d. | Plausibility | ||
| i. | Is the story or artifact anachronistic? | ||
| ii. | Is the story or artifact contradicted by science? | ||
| 2. | Evaluate the Evidence before Publishing a Conclusion | ||
| a. | Treat all sources with appropriate reservations | ||
| b. | Do not dismiss counter-evidence without scholarly consideration | ||
| c. | Be even-handed in treatment of evidence | ||
| d. | Identify speculation when suggesting conclusions | ||
| e. | Correctly transcribe or translate documents. Omissions or elisions should be used to clarify evidence, not alter it | ||
| f. | Weigh the authenticity of all accounts | ||
| g. | Consider the motives of historical actors | ||
| 3. | Avoid Fraud, the deliberate misrepresentation or manipulation of historical evidence | ||
| a. | Do not knowingly present forgery as genuine | ||
| b. | Do not suggest implausible reasons for dismissing genuine evidence or reasonable conjecture | ||
| c. | Do not attribute distorted conclusions to sources | ||
| d. | Do not manipulate statistics to alter conclusions | ||
| e. | Do not deliberately mis-translate texts | ||