The Pentabarf's fifth commandment — a Discordian is prohibited of believing what he reads — is the load-bearing sentence of the whole religion. It makes Discordianism the only line in this corpus whose scripture instructs the reader to disregard it, and it is why the tradition has no orthodoxy, no heresy and no schism worth the name. In practice it functions as a discipline rather than a joke: a Discordian who finds themselves certain about a Discordian doctrine is supposed to notice the certainty and drop it. Scholars of new religious movements have pointed out that this makes the group almost impossible to study by the usual means, since no informant can be treated as authoritative and the tradition regards that as a feature. It also makes the commandment self-cancelling, which Discordians consider the best evidence that it is true.