“The story you are about to see is true. The names have been changed to protect the innocent.”

Anyone who can still remember the sixties will recognize this as the tagline for the TV drama Dragnet.  For four seasons beginning in 1967, Sergeant Joe Friday and his sidekick Officer Bill Gannon investigated crimes in the city of Los Angeles.  Sgt. Friday was known for his deadpan demeanor, and when interrogating a woman for an investigation he would typically say “All we want are the facts, ma’am.”  This was back in the days when the truth was still the truth. 

To tell the truth, that last statement is not strictly true.  Truth has forever been a fleeting commodity, and “fake” is by no means breaking news either. 

While Dragnet was built on true stories about facts, truth and facts are quite different, and the difference matters.  Facts are the currency of scientists and engineers, based on experimental evidence and proven through calculation.  More than mere theories, they are documented, verifiable, indisputable events.  If all the science books, papers and digital records were to vanish, the facts would eventually re-emerge. <continue>