Prof. Bruce Holsinger at the University of Virginia has recently shown just how this can work and what dramatic consequences it can have. His article "Thorkel Farserk Goes for a Swim: Climate Change, the Medieval Optimum, and the Perils of Amateurism," just published in a volume entitled “The Middle Ages in the Modern World: Twenty-First Century Perspectives,” tells a story about a 10th-century Viking and a modern scientist who read with too little skepticism, which has dramatic implications as we confront the recent UN report on climate change.