A skeptic can never decide on anything without ceasing to be a “skeptic”? I don’t think so. By definition, a skeptic first examines the evidence and then makes up his or her mind. The complaint we have against way too many warmers is that they accept positions without actually examining the evidence. Of course some “skeptics” including some here also don’t look at the evidence, but there is a large contingent here who do their best to look at and evaluate evidence purporting to show AGW.

Tests:
* Created multiple files in Word 2007, using different people’s copies
* Preserved some as-is, modified some using same and/or different users
* Did PDF conversions, again using various copies of the above, as well as Acrobat Pro (just in case they have that)
* Examined results and compared to what we have here

Results:
* No question: the PDF was created by the default Word->PDF tool

* No question: the original file title has survived. This tells me Boulton and any other editors did not “clean up” the file metadata.

* In the PDF, the author and date of any subsequent edits are ignored. The original Word file creator’s name, and original create date, always survive

* The ONLY way to avoid this result is to manually edit the author name in Word or Acrobat (and he doesn’t have Acrobat Pro installed.) Given the above, it is Highly Unlikely the Author name was edited.

[I have current Acrobat Pro on one system. I don't know if earlier versions show comprehensive metadata. As others have noted, you can at least scan the file for Boulton's name. But Acrobat shows everything nicely.]

Hope that helps!

Back to my regularly scheduled mayhem… sorry that I can’t really join in the fun much. Life’s too ridiculous right now

You are correct. There may be some Revision control data buried in there somewhere. But it’s not worth the effort, now that it’s yesterday’s news.