tarkus, honest people are willing to research and discuss problems that have been shown to exist with their opinions and ideas. You have continually shown you are unwilling to do that. So who's really being honest here?
That's the key meta issue. Affirmative claims bear the burden of proof. But tarkus offers little more than negative claims. "X doesn't exist in the record, and that's suspicious." Naturally the only way that constitutes an actionable argument is if the proponent can demonstrate that he's searched diligently, if not exhaustively, for X. In real scholarship, proponents who make that sort of claim get the benefit of the doubt. They either have stature in the field that lets readers presume they are diligent. (Stature is hard to acquire otherwise.) Or they're making the statement in a context where the readers would agree with it on its face, as a known deficiency in the pertinent record. We even afford it a little bit to conspiracy theorists who pop in out of the blue, even though we shouldn't.
Negative propositions are insidious as an opening shot because the most effective and direct rebuttal is to do as we've done here: simply refer to the evidence in the record. "Oh yeah? Well here's the X you say doesn't exist." But that's an affirmative rebuttal. It bears the burden of proof, and people familiar with the record can easily satisfy it. So a negative opening that effectively shifts the burden of proof puts the hoax claimant immediately in what seems like a strong position.
But the opponent having satisfied his burden of proof, it then shifts back to the claimant to deal with it. And we've seen how tarkus deals with it through evasion or
ad hoc revision. When that happens enough times, the presumption of diligence erodes and the burden no longer shifts to the opponent. Upon the new claim, "Y doesn't exist in the record, and it should," a defensible response is, "You haven't done a diligent search." Tarkus hasn't enjoyed the presumption of diligence for quite some time now. And that means he is disqualified from shifting the burden for this type of claim onto his opponent. Ignorance of the evidence is not a position from which an argument of suspicious absence has any probative value.
