Witness Evidence

[robvalue]

OK, if this discussion has no particular point other than man merely evaluating anecdotes, that's fine.

However, you still need to address how you differentiate between accurate and inaccurate anecdotes. Also, the nature of the anecdote is important also. You mentioned courtrooms. Trying to compare the reliability of anecdotes to scientific evidence is one thing, but as soon as the anecdote ventures into supernatural territory it will be quite rightly dismissed. An anecdote that requires science to be advanced (or suspended) in order to be true is immediately suspect and far more likely to be a mistake than actually true.

Also, if you're interesting in improving your debate skills, you seem particularly prone to the tu quoque fallacy. This is where instead of defending your own position, you try and indicate that the competing position has the same problems. In this case, that scientific evidence can also be wrong. Even if the tu quoque, (meaning "you too!") is accurate, it does nothing to support your actual claim.

This isn't an insult, it's an extremely common fallacy, used by almost everyone who hasn't spent time studying a bit of logic. I've had to mentally train myself out of it.