The nature of evidence

[Mister Agenda]

I think, that what I find peculiar, is the way the term "anecdote" is being used here (almost as if being shoe horned in).  Perhaps I view evidence differently.  I see different kinds of evidence having different uses or strengths. I also do not think that evidence and reason is in the domain of science alone.  This may be dependent on the category of the topic one is dealing with.   Strength of evidence can vary, and is really dependent on how well the evidence speaks to uncovering the truth in question. 

A double blind study, with a large number of tests; I believe is very strong evidence.  Yet to demand this type of evidence above all other's even within science; is incorrect.   I don't see evolution or other historical studies in science doing double blind tests.   This is because double blind tests speaks to what is likely to occur in the future, and doesn't describe the past.  Similarly;  the results of such tests do not preclude an anomaly, or speak to the truthfulness or falsity of what happened previously.  It is a poor method of judgement in this manner.

What you guy's are calling "anecdotes" in legal terms, they call direct evidence.  It is called direct, because it speaks directly to what has occurred.  Most often the physical or forensic evidence is circumstantial.  It requires and inductive leap to connect the evidence to the case being made.   This is not to say, that direct evidence, is better or more preferred over circumstantial evidence.   It all depends on what the individual piece of evidence, can tell us, and overall, how all the evidence together works to paint a picture of what occurred. 

In mentioning "testimony of evidence", all I meant, was someone else telling us, what they found or observed.  I may have to rely on others, to tell me, about their scientific results (and reporting all the information accurately), the same as someone telling me, what they observed.

Also, to the poster, who wrote an anecdote, as evidence against anecdotes.   Your post was noticed and appreciated.

Here's an anecdote: I noticed a bird while I was driving to work this morning.

What is this evidence of? Well, it's proof positive that I'm claiming I noticed a bird while I was driving to work this morning. You can infer that there is an individual, me, who made that claim. And that's where it ends. On it's own, it's not evidence for my noticing a bird, it's a claim that I noticed a bird.

Anyone can tell a story about anything. Many people make up stories and pass them off as true, many people have faulty memories and get things in their story wrong even thought they're talking about something that really happened. Many people tell stories about things that really happened and alter details to serve their own ends. There are good reasons to be skeptical towards stories and use reasonable criteria to evaluate them.

For example, if a person has earned your trust and you've known their accounts to be pretty accurate in the past, you have a tick mark on your mental checklist for trusting them when they give an account that you can't verify.

Some stories are so inconsequential that it doesn't really matter if they're true or not, so it's fine to take someone's word on them unless you have a particular reason to think they're lying (like my bird story).

If the story is consequential, like testimony at a murder trial, you want more than one person's statements to convict.

Another story that's consequential is if you say you've pulled off cold fusion; you're going to want other laboratories to replicate that experiment.

We should be particularly wary of believing a consequential story that we would like to be true.

Oh, and evolution has made a number of verified predictions. See, if the fossil record and evolution work like we think they do, we can see when we don't have fossils that show an intermediate stage. If evolution is false, we should not ever find those intermediate stages; but it's quite common to do so. The most famous recent example was the Tiktallik discovery, where paleontologists predicted what strata they ought to be able to find a species like that in and subsequently found it by looking there.