#suspicion
A quotation by Kendall, Paul Murray
The biographer does not trust his witnesses, living or dead. He may drip with the milk of human kindness, believe everything that his wife and his friends and his children tell him, enjoy his neighbors and embrace the universe — but in the workshop he must be as ruthless as a board meeting smelling out embezzlement, as suspicious as a secret agent riding the Simplon-Orient Express, as cold-eyed as a pawnbroker viewing a leaky concertina. With no respect for human dignity, he plays off his witnesses one against the other, snoops for additional information to confront them with, probes their prejudices and their pride, checks their reliability against their self-interest, thinks the worst until he is permitted to think better.
Paul Murray Kendall (1911-1973) American academic and historian
“Walking the Boundaries,” The Art of Biography (1965)
#quotation #quote #biographer #investigation #research-2 #skepticism #suspicion #testimony #witness
More notes and sourcing on WIST: https://wist.info/kendall-paul-murray/48658/
Suspected Meth Lab Explodes In U.S. Government Building
[…]
The #explosion occurred in #NIST Building 236, far from the majority of the labs, so it didn’t damage any #research endeavors. It happened in a room that had been emptied of equipment, as one #experiment had recently ended and another was slated to begin. The #blast occurred on a Saturday, so luckily few employees were around, but it did injure a #security guard who was on duty. (He quit his #job the day after the incident.)
So the #question on everyone’s mind is: how was there a #methLab in a #government building, and who was operating it? #Paul_Starks, a spokesman for the local Montgomery County #police, would not comment on whether any chemicals or equipment used to make the #drugs were found on the property. But #NBC Washington reports that the #securityGuard was found with burns on his arms and hands, igniting #suspicion that he might have been involved in making the #meth.
[…]
#National_Institute_of_Standards_and_Technology #Maryland #Gaithersburg #Washington_DC
