Exercise 3: Why the Blindness Detail Is Stronger Evidence Than a Matching Birth Date — Possible Solution
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A matching birth date, weight, and developmental record is real,
genuinely useful supporting evidence for identifying a candidate - it
narrows down who COULD plausibly be the child in question, and makes a
real, positive case that a specific person's own documented history
lines up with the experiment's own records. But matching background
details, on their own, are fundamentally about ESTABLISHING a
candidate's plausibility, not about directly testing whether that
candidate's real documented condition is actually CONSISTENT with what
the original experiment's own evidence shows.

The blindness detail works completely differently, and more directly:
it's a real, documented fact about Merritte's own clinical condition
that can be checked directly against the experiment's own surviving
film footage, which shows the child clearly engaging in object-
directed visual behavior - reaching for and looking at specific
objects. If Merritte was genuinely, completely blind, as his own real
clinical file states, he could not possibly be the same child
performing visually-directed actions in front of a camera. This isn't
merely supporting circumstantial evidence pointing toward a different
candidate - it's a real, direct logical CONTRADICTION between one
candidate's own documented condition and the primary source evidence
(the film itself) from the original study.

This is why the blindness detail carries more real evidential weight:
matching background details can only ever narrow down who plausibly
COULD be the child, while a direct, documented contradiction with the
primary source evidence can actively RULE OUT a specific candidate
altogether, which is a fundamentally stronger and more decisive kind of
evidence.

ANSWER: A matching birth date only makes a candidate plausible - it
doesn't test that candidate's own documented condition against the
original study's actual evidence. The blindness detail is stronger
because it directly contradicts the primary source itself (the film
showing visually-directed object engagement) - a real, documented
condition that would make it logically impossible for that candidate
to be the child seen performing those actions, which rules the
candidate out rather than merely failing to support them.

WHY THIS WORKS AS AN ANSWER
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This distinguishes supporting/plausibility evidence from directly
contradictory evidence tested against the primary source, explaining
why the second carries genuinely stronger evidential weight.