As it should be. I like to think of journalism as the softest science in that it has a lot of subtlety - hidden connections and dimensions - but ultimately the

As it should be. I like to think of journalism as the softest science in that it has a lot of subtlety - hidden connections and dimensions - but ultimately the objective is to be able to infer the state of the world at some time - be it past, present of future - based on some partial information. And just like in regular science, collective knowledge can be leveraged and built upon if enough people take it upon themselves to do spot checks verifying the accuracy of accounts of events to which you might have an informational advantage. This can be via witnessing events first hand or have pre existing depth or via direct consumption of the raw primaries or just going on a dive.