I listened to a podcast with Errol Morris on the same subject, and got a similar impression that there was no need to be so harsh. IIRC Errol's main academic ar

I listened to a podcast with Errol Morris on the same subject, and got a similar impression that there was no need to be so harsh. IIRC Errol's main academic argument against Kuhn was that he simultaneously touted his idea of "paradigm shift", but also that the best way to study the history of science was to be very meticulous about only making inferences directly from primary materials. Morris's concern was that since we are in a different paradigm than say Newton, the inferences we make from his works will be tainted from it own viewpoint. In other words, you can't have it both ways--either past ways of thinking are unreachable or "paradigm shifts" are not real. This was all tied into Morris's views on epistemology more generally. He directed The Thin Blue Line, which was the first crime documentary with dramatic reenactment. Reenactment can be argued to be inauthentic, but he argued that it is no more problematic than taking someone's verbal account, as was common in documentaries at the time. In some sense by putting pictures to words the director can ensure that the victims account is misinterpreted as little as possible.