Did CBS Get Taken In By A Hoax?

This seems to suggest, fairly conclusively, that the Killian memos could very well have been produced by a typewriter in 1973. What the Insta-freeps have proven is that it's possible to create a document using Microsoft Word that looks similar to the Killian memos.

Um, so what?

We have two hypotheses to choose from: 1) the Killian memos are authentic, and 2) the Killian memos are forgeries. Despite the Freeps', protestations, there is no reason to believe that the documents are inauthentic based on physical analysis alone. Indeed, consider for a moment the epistemic consequences that privileging the second hypothesis would entail. Anytime a typewritten document from an earlier period in time surfaces, and can be almost/not-quite/not really duplicated by a computer, are we to assume that the document is fraudulent? (Btw, Glenn is such a chump.)

No. Such a hypothesis offers no greater explanatory power over the document's origins, and it entails an unnecessary and implausible theoretical complexity. Unless new and further data emerges to support the hoax theory, then the rational conclusion is either to remain agnostic, or (better, more probabilistic) to assume that the document is genuine pending the discovery of new contradictory evidence.

And what we find, by probing the issue any further at all, is that despite some fuck-ups by CBS News, all the available data suggests that at the very least, Bush got an immensely unfair deal to get into the National Guard, and once there, barely fulfilled his duties, if at all.