As war is too important to be left to the generals, methodology is too important to be left to methodologists: The connection between how we carry out inquiries and what we want to inquire after is too intimate.

Chapter 12 offers testimony on the intimacy of the connections between substance and method. Our point of departure was substantive skepticism. Nowadays many say they are in favor of racial equality; surely not all are genuinely committed to it. But how can we tell who means what they say? And what might it mean for a person to mean what he or she says?

A test suggested itself. A person means what he says if he persists in it even in the face of pressure to take it back. Persistence, so understood, is a standard of sincerity, and sincerity is just what we should like to establish more firmly on the issue of race. And if that is our substantive goal, then a method for its accomplishment follows: First give people an opportunity to declare themselves in favor of assistance for blacks, then try to talk them out of it. The chapter that follows lays out the method of counterargument. The procedures are described in detail in our study of issue persuasibility that follows and so we want only to say a word about our general objective here. […]