Evidence is information that provides the basis for a point of view.
As presented last week by Mayank:
Evidence can be facts, experimental results or observations from nature.
To support an argument, Evidence should be Reliable and Valid.
Reliable observations or results should be objective, not subjective. Reliable data, are data
you can trust, data that are repeatable. If someone does the same experiment he/she
should get the same results. But of course, sometimes it is not possible to repeat an
observation or experiment, for many reasons.
So how can you evaluate evidence if you can’t redo the experiment? How to judge whether
to trust the evidence or not ?
The first step is to assess the authorship and the nature of the source of the evidence
and ask yourself:
Who says so? Is it a person with knowledge, expertise and authority in the field? Or is it a
journalist writing for the popular press? Or is it maybe your neighbour, who has heard
something on the radio?
If the evidence comes from a person with authority in the field, are his views shared with
other experts in the field? Or is it a single person’s point of view?