Edward
... Perfectly understand that issue.
I was giving a lecture on confederate medical and hospital systems. Using data and statistics that I had extensively researched. Immediately thereafter I was pulled aside and instructed that I could only use the statistics that their high ego estemed NPS historian had proclaimed, and absolutely no others.

His reported mortality rate told to me was way way off from anything I had ever tallied. I asked him obviously I had missed some vital reports and politely inquired from what sources he obtained his data.

"Well its the same information that you have, but they didnt count the dead over in xxx cemetery, so with those (many thousands) added in, thats the corrected mortality rate" I responded "Well Im sure you also know that xxx cemetery also was used by about 30 other area hospitals,not just this one, as well as about 60 percent of the dead in there were actually battlefield casualties reinterred, not hospital deaths"

He just stood there a moment silent looking at me with a blank clueless stare, turned and walked away. Two park rangers stood there silent looking mortified that someone, anyone dared to inquire or question anything he claimed. I was equally surprized that someone reportedly of his acedemic and professional status could or would have just made an open assumption that the entire population of a given cemetery (16K) were ALL dead from this single hospital facility and were accidently MISSED in the highly detailed medical reports this facility kept?... When everyone knows that it also contained many reburials from area battlefields... Also claim and publish this with absolutely no evidence or accounts to support it...

In these cases its much easier to just write your own account, give your own supporting evidence. Rather than trying to change his..

Frederick