D. and I argue about this all the time. He thinks that contradictory/differing versions make things less real. I think they make them more so -- just like multiple eye witness accounts differ, if they're true. When they're identical -- that's when you begin to think people are lying

I'm with you. Even when particular facts are consistent, the lens is always going to be different. Different people notice different things. Different things stand out more to different people. Different things matter more to other people. And so on.

I'm an evaluator by training. Governments hire my colleagues and I to find out what funded programs work, which don't, why they work, and so on. Whether it is HIV, literacy, or refugees, nobody involved ever sees things the same way. Generally speaking, you can plot all the different versions on a diagram and be pretty sure the "truth" is somewhere in the middle of them. :p

Edited to add: And those are just the ones telling the truth. We won't get into the corruption. :P