I don’t have much to add to this discussion, but I want to note that I’m extremely interested in any further insights you have about this, because this problem has always bothered me.
I expect you’ve already thought of this, but you might get some epistemic mileage out of looking at what primary documents a fact traces back to and reasoning about what those documents can/cannot possibly prove about the past. For example, if the claim about boat sizes had traced back to a set of documents about boats only in Europe, you would know to be suspicious.
I don’t have much to add to this discussion, but I want to note that I’m extremely interested in any further insights you have about this, because this problem has always bothered me.
I expect you’ve already thought of this, but you might get some epistemic mileage out of looking at what primary documents a fact traces back to and reasoning about what those documents can/cannot possibly prove about the past. For example, if the claim about boat sizes had traced back to a set of documents about boats only in Europe, you would know to be suspicious.