There is wide agreement that prescribed fire is essential and under-utilized for restoring and maintaining natural ecosystem function, sustaining native wildlife populations, and mitigating wildfire hazard. There is less agreement on the history of fire, specifically the degree to which historic fire regimes and the natural communities that depend on them are essentially anthropogenic as opposed lightning-initiated as a function of climate and topography. This presentation will provide an over-simplified summary of the two positions and present examples of more comprehensive research approaches that embrace data over dogma.