True historians can make intellectual mistakes. Nationalist apologists commit intellectual crimes. The Armenian issue has long been plagued with nationalist studies. This has led to an inconsistent history that ignores the time-tested principles of historical research. Yet when the histories of Turks and Armenians are approached with the normal tools of history a logical and consistent account results.
Historians first ask the most basic question.
To find the answer, historians look to government statistics for population figures, especially to archival statistics, because governments seldom deliberately lie to themselves. They want to know their populations so they can understand them, watch them, conscript them, and, most importantly to a government, tax them. The Ottomans were no different than any other government in this situation. Like other governments they made mistakes, particularly in under-counting women and children. However, this can be corrected using statistical methods.