Resistance

GERMAR RUDOLF, RESISTANCE IS OBLIGATORYself, it is very striking that neither the prosecution nor the court noreven the defense made any attempt to remedy this deficit. To be sure, itwould have necessitated close cooperation of the Polish and Soviet authoritiesfor such things as researching their archives and forensic investigationof the alleged locations and weapons of the crimes. It is possiblethat such a suggestion would have been rejected, which in itselfwould have been significant. But the German officials did not even tryit in this case as in all similar trials. Thus, witness testimony is practicallythe only thing on which these court verdicts were based.And yet: Witness statements are not data sets! Witness statements are allegations, which means they are the popularequivalent of a scientific thesis or theory. For this reason, witness testimony must be supported by verifiableevidence. Such testimony can contain indications as to how, whereand when such evidence could be gathered. Even if 100 witnesses should say the same thing, this would still notbe proof. The pattern “A alleges X, B confirms A, and C confirmsB” etc. can be continued indefinitely, but it still reflects merely a circularreasoning, in which each witness relies on someone else asproof of his allegations. A historical example of how such giganticcircular self-confirmation of countless witnesses led to the fallaciousassumption that the allegation must therefore somehow be true is thepersecution of witches of the late middle ages and early modern age.In their pioneering basic research on witch trials, Soldan and Heppedescribed in detail how most witnesses, completely without compulsionbut driven by the spirit of the age and so-called “commonknowledge,” repeatedly gave similar testimonies. For this reason,even impartial observers had concluded that the charges must havehad substance. 102 Today we certainly know that this was not so. Should someone in the exact sciences rely on witness statements ofcolleagues or laypersons as proof of a theory, that person wouldmake himself appear worse than ridiculous. My former PhD supervisoronce made this drastically clear, when a colleague, Dr. HaraldHillebrecht, lecturing during a departmental seminar in 1992, hadjust quoted a statement by another colleague as proof of the physical102 Cf. Soldan-Heppe, Geschichte der Hexenprozesse, new edition by Max Bauer, 2 vols., Müller& Kiepenheuer, Hanau 1968.78