> Epistemics > Sourcing > arghXiv:2512.03318
Symmetric Citation of a Nineteenth-Century Null Result in Contemporary Exchanges
Abstract: We record every citation of one well-known nineteenth-century optical null result across 47 channels over 22 months (N = 2,904 citations). Citation rates are indistinguishable between the two positions in the dispute (48.2 and 51.8 per cent of citations respectively), and in 97 per cent of cases the citing participant characterises the result as decisive for their own position. No exchange in the corpus turned on the reported figures, the apparatus, or the conditions of the observation; in 11 citations the result was described as a measurement and in 2,893 as a proof. We make no claim about what the experiment established. We report only that both positions hold it to have established their own, at the same rate, and that the disagreement is therefore not about the experiment.