While as a trained economic historian I am a firm believer that eventually the data will enlighten those to the “truth”, ultimately, history and economics is a somewhat rhetorical debate and a matter of persuasion to what the “truth” is.

With vastly more people having access to greater amounts of data, the irony of having more data available is that instead of having a more focused spotlight on the most probable explanation of what was or what is, we have a case of a search light scanning the night sky, wherein the many perceptions maniuplate the data for their own rhetorical ends.

To paraphrase one of my favourite history professors motto, “In history, as in present time assessment, it ain’t so much what is true as what people think is true.”