I remember grappling with the self-refutation objection back in my undergraduate days in a philosophy of science course under Robert Frederick.

Ten minutes after she got down she broke luck. A white trick in a thirty-seven Buick picked her up. I timed her. She had racehorse speed.

At that moment a flight of birds passed close overhead, and at the whirr of their wings a panic fear seized her.

The crowd was patient and never dreamed of storming Chungnanhai (which could scarcely have resisted a mass assault) and the most battle-tested groups made no attempt to send their commandos to kidnap the “highest leader.” Calm—if one may use the word—prevailed, and the group leaders were content to lead their followers in chanting slogans against Liu and quotations from Mao. The Chairman, like Vice-Chairman Lin Piao, had been away on a tour of inspection in the provinces since early July; at the time of the siege of Chungnanhai, he was in Wuhan.