  The likelihood principle makes strong claims about the nature of statistical
evidence but is controversial. Its claims are undermined by the existence of
several examples that are assumed to show that it allows, with unity
probability, domination of all other hypotheses by the uninteresting,
determinist hypothesis that whatever happened had to happen. Such examples are
generally assumed to be important obstacles to the application of the
likelihood principle: they are counter-examples to the principle. A re-analysis
of Birnbaum's 1969 `counter-example', demonstrates that the standardly reported
analyses of such examples involves an inappropriate treatment of a nuisance
parameter and that, when the nuisance parameter is adequately considered, there
is no conflict between the evidential consequences of the likelihood principle
and the intuitive evidential account of the problem. It also shows that the
conclusion that the likelihood principle allows the determinist hypothesis to
dominate with unity probability requires a misconception about the scope of the
likelihood principle or an inappropriately specified statistical model.
Whatever happened did \textit{not} have to happen.
