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Peter Principle (birther version): A birther will dig into the details of the President’s long-form birth certificate image until they reach their level of incompetence with electronic documents, and then declare it a "forgery."

Completing a complex argument is hard work. In a mathematical proof, there is no room for skipping a step. The proof is either complete and fully justified, or it is nothing.

Giving up short of the mark is what I see in birther image analysis. Birthers start out to prove something, not to learn the truth, but putting that aside what they do is to look and look and look at the birth certificate that the White House released until they find something that they don’t understand. Now none of these guys really knows the details of how compression algorithms work. None of them even knows exactly what compression algorithm was used by the White House. Nevertheless, they start with some knowledge, they may search on the Internet for more, and they may do experiments; but ultimately they come upon something that they do not understand. The unbiased observer when stumped just says, “I don’t know.” Birthers, as the ultimate biased observers, when they reach an impasse declare victory and assign the desired conclusion to what they do not understand: forgery. That is the essence of birther image analysis: rising to their own level of incompetence and then claiming victory, an inevitable outcome of the methodology when you think about it.

Then they fall back on the defense of asking others to prove them wrong. Proof doesn’t work that way.