When Howard Carter announced to the world in 1922 that he had discovered the tomb of Tutankhamun he had to rely on facts, not on opinions. Similarly, before the 19th century people thought that diseases were caused by “bad air” or imbalances in bodily fluids – until scientists like Louis Pasteur demonstrated that they had found the origins of diseases through empirical evidence during the 19th century, like the way that Howard Carter discovered the tomb of Tutankhamun. Pasteur made this discovery between 1857 and 1865, and published his final definitive findings, proving that micro-organisms come from pre-existing micro-organisms and setting the stage for modern microbiology and pathology, in his “Mémoire sur les corpuscules organisés qui existent dans l'atmosphère”, in 1862.

Likewise, when Professor of English Timothy Burbery of Marshall University (Huntingdon, West Virginia, USA) claimed that Dante's “Inferno” offered an “accurate” depiction of Asteroid impact he could only provide an opinion about that, not a fact.

The difference between an opinion and a fact is very easy to understand – but it seems that the Homo Sapiens species still struggles with the difference just as much in the 21st century as it did before the 19th century. Ample evidence of people still being contaminated by this difficulty of thought can be easily found on the Amazon Books Website.