  The missionary zeal of many Bayesians of old has been matched, in the other
direction, by a view among some theoreticians that Bayesian methods are
absurd-not merely misguided but obviously wrong in principle. We consider
several examples, beginning with Feller's classic text on probability theory
and continuing with more recent cases such as the perceived Bayesian nature of
the so-called doomsday argument. We analyze in this note the intellectual
background behind various misconceptions about Bayesian statistics, without
aiming at a complete historical coverage of the reasons for this dismissal.
