#counterevidence

1. The historian must treat sources with appropriate reservations; 2. The historian must not dismiss counterevidence without scholarly consideration; 3. The historian must be even-handed in treatment of evidence and eschew "cherry-picking"; 4. The historian must clearly indicate any speculation; 5. The historian must not mistranslate documents or mislead by omitting parts of documents; 6. The historian must weigh the authenticity of all accounts, not merely those that contradict a favored view; and 7. The historian must take the motives of historical actors into consideration.

The idea behind the meta-induction is that all of our theories are fundamentally provisional and quite possibly wrong, if we can add that idea to our cognitive toolkit, we will be better able to listen with curiosity and empathy to those whose theories contradict our own. We will be better able to pay attention to counterevidence - those anomalous bits of data that make our picture of the world a little weirder, more mysterious, less clean, less done. And we will be able to hold our own beliefs a bit more humbly, in the knowledge that better ideas are almost certainly on the way.