Field Notes04Method
An inferred constraint has to stay inferred
Some links in the archive are our reasoning rather than anyone’s account. They are marked as such permanently, and no amount of confidence promotes them.
August 2026
It is tempting to treat a reasonable reconstruction as established once it has sat on the page long enough. The distinction between what a source says and what we concluded is the only thing separating this archive from a plausible story, so it is stored in the data rather than in an editor’s memory.
What this rests on
Facts below are read out of the archive at the moment this page is built. Our reading of them is labelled separately.
From the archive
4
4 links across the published cases are marked inferred — reasoned by us, stated by nobody.
- She did not ask farmers to move. She moved to them. — outcome
- No Uzbek founder had done it. — problem
- A shop where buying and learning are the same visit. — problem
- Twenty-five years away, then a roadshow through nineteen cities. — problem
Each of these renders on the page with its own label. A reader never has to work out which parts we are asserting and which parts we are reasoning towards.