Methodology
How the committee authenticates documents, weighs evidence, and decides what not to publish.
Authentication
A document is admitted into the committee’s archive only after two of three independent authenticators — a credentialed archivist, a credentialed materials scientist, and a credentialed historian with relevant regional expertise — have signed a written attestation that the document’s provenance, condition, and content are consistent with its claimed origin.
The committee does not admit documents that have passed through the trade in rare Americana. We have, on three separate occasions, declined donations from collectors whose chain of custody we could not fully document.
Weighting
Evidence is weighted by specificity and independence. The 1971 USGS radiation readings are weighted heavily because they are specific (they name three site numbers) and independent (the readings were taken by a team with no apparent interest in the question). The Oliver Cowdery diary is weighted heavily because it is first-person and internally consistent across hundreds of pages. Testimony from the anonymous archivist is weighted more lightly because it is first-person but anonymous, and we cannot independently corroborate its claims.
What we will not publish
- Documents that would expose a named source to professional, legal, or personal jeopardy.
- Documents that would expose a non-consenting third party to personal jeopardy.
- Documents whose publication would foreseeably cause imminent physical harm to identifiable persons.
The committee has, on two occasions, declined to publish documents that satisfied our authentication standard but failed one of the three tests above.