Does history have a mortal sin?

One of the assignments for the class on the American Revolution I'm taking right now is to read Gordon Wood's The Radicalism of the American Revolution, some critiques of the book, and Wood's response. One of the more strident attacks on Wood came from Michael Zuckerman (sadly, you'll need a subscription to JSTOR to read those two). One of Zuckerman's complaints is that Wood relies on selective quotation that supports his thesis, ignoring a whole raft of quotations that endanger it. Wood fires back at Zuckerman, accusing him of only being able to conceive of the past in terms of the present.

What's interesting here is that both accusations are sins that historians are incapable of avoiding entirely.

Historians, almost by definition, choose those quotations that support their argument. Good scholarly work is presents evidence cogently, with a clear endpoint in mind all along. It's necessary to exclude some information in writing history. Historians tell stories of the past. To do so they have to select elements of the past to include in that story.

Wood's claim to be able to do otherwise aside, historians necessarily see the past in categories that we grasp in the present. It's impossible not to. To give a slightly absurd example: if we lacked the concept of the number three, how could we possibly have any understanding of the Trinity?

This isn't to suggest, of course, that selective quotation and presentism are acceptable. Far from it. It's the historian's responsibility to choose facts and quotations that are representative of a larger set of data. Similarly, historians must try to shed present prejudices and examine the past on its own terms, all the while recognizing that the present will shade their interpretations.

So is one worse? I'm not sure. I could make arguments on either side, but I don't have a strong feeling either way.