"Apes and Humans" was one of Wisconsin Public Radio's "To the Best of Our Knowledge" (TTBOOK) broadcasts for 2013-06-09. One segment was about the so-called "monkey girl", a five-year-old girl kidnapped in Columbia and then abandoned in the jungle. Supposedly she survived with the help of monkeys who "adopted" her. She, Marina Chapman, and her daughter, Vanessa James, wrote a book on Marina's experiences – "The Girl with No Name". Philip Sherwell of the Telegraph was asked to go to Columbia to check up on her story.
There were some inconsistencies in the stories he heard, but considering the events were fifty years ago, he would have been concerned if they were consistent. He came away not establishing anything that would make him "believe that she'd made it up…"
In other words, by compiling a mosaic of thoughts, Sherwell came away believing Chapman's story in general.
On the other hand, in the preface to his satire, "L'Ile des Pingouins", Anatole France claims if you have a "fact" about certain events from one person, you should believe it, but if you have reports from several people then their reports are always contradictory and always unreconcilable (my translation).
Unfortunately, too many people today rely on one source of news, and whatever is said by that source must be true. They just don't want to believe that some of what the source says may be true, some may be partly true, and some may be completely false.
