Recognising When Evidence Is Simply Insufficient
Launch library · evergreen read
Sometimes, after genuinely thorough and patient research, the honest conclusion has to be that a story simply cannot be told with the level of certainty its subject actually deserves, and recognising this outcome is a skill in its own right, quite distinct from giving up too early on a difficult lead.
The signs tend to be fairly consistent across different projects: sources that cannot be corroborated no matter how many are checked, a documentary record with gaps that cannot be closed through any reasonable further effort, and testimony that keeps shifting in ways no single explanation can fully account for.
Publishing anyway, stretching thin material to fill the shape of a piece already planned in advance, tends to produce writing that reads as thinner than it should, so setting the project aside, or reshaping it around only what can genuinely be shown, usually serves the reader far better in the end.