Authentication Euphoria?

Today Yahoo! featured this article about a document purported to be one of Lincoln's last actions before his death in 1865. As is fairly evident to us (especially once we know it's a fake), the "5" on the document does not quite match the other numbers and there appears to be an ugly smudge underneath it. The document was "discovered" by Thomas Lowry in 1998, so one wonders why it took so long to prove that it had been altered.

It seems to me that everyone wants to believe that others are truthful and well-meaning. We especially like the idea of "Honest Abe," and probably hate the suggestion that anything connected with him would be fraudulent (even if it's not his fault). Tests to gauge authenticity are also expensive and time-consuming, and question the expertise of the experts. It makes everyone feel better (I imagine) to authenticate a work than to expose a forgery. Lowry counted on this, and though the National Archives now "has banned Lowry from its facilities," he likely rode the wave of that discovery for a decade with publications and lectures, and is now nearing retirement age anyway. His rivals are gloating at their discovery of the alteration, but they get little else from it. No one's really proud of the guy who annoyingly points out an inconsistency in a document or work of art.