Thread by @JohnWHuber

Newsflash for the news. You saw a smoke bomb while you were doing live cable news. You called it tear gas in the heat of the moment and because you don’t know the difference

This influenced the witnesses and sources you later spoke to “confirming” the tear gas

Also, a priest - or any civilian - isn’t especially qualified to know what tear gas smells like, or tastes like, or the difference between that and a smoke bomb, or the effects on their physical well being

A person simply saying something is tear gas doesn’t make it become tear gas in the real world of real objects that exist independently of the observers views or comments on them. It’s suggestive, sure. Useful evidence perhaps. But they need to be qualified opinions. Most aren’t.

Now too many people are invested in the story that you helped create so they’re going to claim (or already have) that they had prior experience of tear gas in the military, or from reporting from a war zone, or from a friend of theirs who “definitely” knows what tear gas is like

And you’re invested in those guys being right, so now you can’t question them, creating a circular feedback loop

But that nagging doubt you feel about if you screwed up? It’s there for a reason...