What about the times he found cheating by the winners of photographic contests? Those were hardly obvious choices. And falsely accusing someone would have rea

What about the times he found cheating by the winners of photographic contests? Those were hardly obvious choices. And falsely accusing someone would have really hurt his reputation. Of course, investigation proved that he was right. He analyzes something every few weeks it seems like (I've read the blog for years now), so yeah, there's a long history for you to look at. The outcome is only "never in doubt" if you're using hindsight bias. Besides, even when he already knows an image is fake, he figures out what is fake and how it was faked. One example would be showing which of those lottery numbers was real: the whole row was fake... except for the last number. Something which helped explain why the 2nd and 3rd photograph were the way that they were. He's quite up front about the fact that some tests give inconclusive results. I believe that he has discussed the limitations of the tests. But even a test that gives an inconclusive result half the time can be useful if it shows you which areas of the image need attention the rest of the time. That data is indeed useful. He has talked about it. And you could just politely email him if you wanted to know more. And yes, it probably is hard to separate the success due to technique and skills. But it's hard to believe that he would be good at picking out fake images without understanding why he was good at picking them out.