One scientific device for determining whether the transatlantic slavery was ‘trade’ between the British and the Yoruba, was to apply the ‘plausibility test’, of whether or not the story was credible in the eyes of an intelligent, uninvolved reasonable person.  For a proposition to be plausible:

               i.         Bare assertion will not do; it is not sufficient.

              ii.         There must be something that would cause a reasonable person to think there was a reasonable prospect the assertion would prove to be true.

             iii.         The reasonable prospect must be based on cogent evidence but, plausibility could be demonstrated also by a priori reasoning.

Applied to the transatlantic slavery, there were,

               i.         no physical evidence of slave-requiring projects in the Yoruba hinterland,

              ii.         no physical evidence of slave-holding facilities in the Yoruba hinterland,

             iii.         no contracts of sale between European slavers and any Yoruba rulers or traders,

             iv.         no local myths or legends of Yoruba slave raiders,

              v.         Europeans had the superior arms, which were very suited to slave-raiding, and

             vi.         the costal populations were sufficient in their numbers to meet European needs.

The Applicants here assert that the ‘plausibility test’ was not satisfied, and that by failing the ‘plausibility test’, the proposition that the Yoruba were slave raiders/traders, not just victims, was not true.

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