Effacing the Preface Paradox

The Preface Paradox goes as follows:

An author has written a book wherein he makes many claims. He has read over the book many times, sent each idea to reviewers/editors, and cross-referenced everything with existing research. Thus, he has reason to believe that all the claims he makes in the book are true.

However, he knows (from experience or otherwise) that in spite of his hard work and rigourous examination, there are likely still errors in the book. Thus, he has reason to believe that not all the claims in his book are true (or in other words, that at least one of the claims in his book are false).

And thus, he includes a preface at the beginning of the book with some message to note this (e.g. “There are likely some errors in this book and they are my sole responsibility.”).

This sounds pretty normal— you can probably find or think of a book that has this kind of preface or addendum regarding the accuracy of claims that are made. However, maybe you realized something strange in the above scenario.

The author clearly went through a lot of effort to verify that the claims he wrote about were true. If he believed they were wrong in some way, he simply would not have included that claim. (Assuming a good-faith author.) So how can he simultaneously include the preface regarding his belief that there are errors in the book?

There’s good reason behind that belief as well — tons of books include errors and with a big enough book, it can…