craigd wrote on Aug 19
th, 2018 at 11:16am:
Only thoughts, but thank goodness for the 'primary sources', even if we'll never known if some of them were written with bias.
The historian's assumption is, or should be, that some degree of bias, incomplete or selective knowledge, poor recollection, etc. is almost inherent in "eye-witness" reports--which is why experienced detectives don't trust them without corroboration when investigating a crime. If possible, a conscientious historian would compare all related personal anecdotes & whatever other evidence is available, to try to arrive at the most probable deduction about what actually happened.
So-called "oral history" is even more unreliable, because it's usually based on long, long-ago memories, unsupported by written documents (or it wouldn't be "oral"). This I learned personally while still in Junior H.S., when I talked as often as I could with "old people" about old guns, old cars, & other old stuff (because even then, new stuff didn't much interest me), learning much later, through reading, that much of what I'd been told was badly distorted, if not pure bunk.