Information about evidence

Evidence in its broadest sense, includes anything that is used to determine or demonstrate the truth of an assertion. Philosophically, evidence can include propositions which are presumed to be true used in support of other propositions that are presumed to be falsifiable. The term has specialized meanings when used with respect to specific fields, such as policy, scientific research, criminal investigations, and legal discourse.

According to postmodern thought, evidence is a commodity, according to University of North Carolina- Chapel Hill philosophy research.

The most immediate form of evidence available to an individual is the observations of that person's own senses. For example an observer wishing for evidence that the sky is blue need only look at the sky. However this same example illustrates some of the difficulties of evidence as well:

someone who was blue-yellow color blind, but did not know it, would have a very different perception of what color the sky was than someone who was not. Even simple sensory perceptions (qualia) ultimately are subjective; guaranteeing that the same information can be considered somehow true in an objective sense is the main challenge of establishing standards of evidence.
there is also the question of what is meant by 'blue', and how we measure it. (If determined by a particular wave-length of colour - then how do we actually measure this?
there is also the question of how evidence 'translates' e.g. is 'blau' in German universally translated as 'blue' in English: Germans may have different words for different parts of the spectrum; thus 'evidence' is a social construction.

Evidence in science

Main article: Scientific evidence

In scientific research evidence is accumulated through observations of phenomena that occur in the natural world, or which are created as experiments in a laboratory. Scientific evidence usually goes towards supporting or rejecting a hypothesis. When evidence is contradictory to theoretical expectations, the evidence and the ways of making it are often closely scrutinized (see experimenter's regress) and only at the end of this process the theory is rejected: in that case we call that refutation of the theory. The rules for evidence used by science are collected systematically in an attempt to avoid the bias inherent to anecdotal evidence: nonetheless even one anecdotal evidence when possible to replicate is enough to reject a theory incompatible with that evidence.

Evidence in criminal investigation

In criminal investigation, rather than attempting to prove an abstract or hypothetical point, the evidence gatherers are attempting to determine who is responsible for a criminal act. The focus of criminal evidence is to connect physical evidence and reports of witnesses to a specific person.r

Evidence in law

Main article: Evidence (law)

Legal evidence differs from the above in the tight rules governing the presentation of facts that tend to prove or disprove the point at issue. In law, certain policies require that evidence that tends to prove or disprove an assertion or fact must nevertheless be excluded from consideration based either on indicia relating to reliability, or on broader social concerns. Testimony (which tells) and exhibits (which show) are the two main categories of evidence presented at a trial or hearing.

Evidence in statistics

This is the key of statistical inference, for which see e.g. the work of Allan Birnbaum and others.

Types of evidence

External links

http://www.evidencescience.org/

truth extends from honesty, good faith, and sincerity in general, to agreement with fact or reality in particular.^[1] The term has no single definition about which the majority of professional philosophers and scholars agree.
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Philosophy is the discipline concerned with questions of how one should live (ethics); what sorts of things exist and what are their essential natures (metaphysics); what counts as genuine knowledge (epistemology); and what are the correct principles of reasoning (logic).
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Falsifiability (or refutability or testability) is the logical possibility that an assertion can be shown false by an observation or a physical experiment. That something is "falsifiable" does not mean it is false; rather, it means that it is capable of being
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policy is a deliberate plan of action to guide decisions and achieve rational outcome(s). The term may apply to government, private sector organizations and groups, and individuals.
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Scientific method is a body of techniques for investigating phenomena, acquiring new knowledge, or correcting and integrating previous knowledge. It is based on gathering observable, empirical and measurable evidence subject to specific principles of reasoning,^[1]
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detective is an investigator, either a member of a police agency or a private person. Private detectives usually operate commercially and are licensed. They may be known as private investigators (P.I.s or "Private I's", hence the play-on-words, "Private Eyes").
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LAW may refer to:

Lightweight Anti-tank Weapon, like the M72 LAW (US Army) and the LAW 80 (British Army)
Palestinian Society for the Protection of Human Rights (also known as LAW)
League of American Bicyclists, formerly known as the League of American Wheelmen

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Color blindness, or color vision deficiency, in humans is the inability to perceive differences between some or all colors that other people can distinguish. It is most often of genetic nature, but may also occur because of eye, nerve, or brain damage, or due to exposure to certain
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Qualia" (IPA: [ˈkwɑːliə]) is "an unfamiliar term for something that could not be more familiar to each of us: the ways things seem to us"^[1].
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In reason, subjectivity refers to the property of perceptions, arguments, and language as being based in a subject's point of view, and hence influenced in accordance with a particular bias.
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A social construction or social construct is any institutionalized entity or artifact in a social system "invented" or "constructed" by participants in a particular culture or society that exists because people agree to behave as if it exists or follow certain conventional
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Scientific evidence is evidence which serves to either support or counter a scientific theory or hypothesis. Such evidence is expected to be empirical and properly documented in accordance with scientific method such as is applicable to the particular field of inquiry.
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In the scientific method, an experiment (Latin: ex- periri, "of (or from) trying") is a set of observations performed in the context of solving a particular problem or question, to support or falsify a hypothesis or research concerning phenomena.
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laboratory (informally, lab) is a facility that provides controlled conditions in which scientific research, experiments, and measurement may be performed. The title of laboratory
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A hypothesis (from Greek ὑπόθεσις) consists either of a suggested explanation for a phenomenon or of a reasoned proposal suggesting a possible correlation between multiple phenomena.
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In science, experimenter's regress refers to a loop of dependence between theory and evidence. In order to judge whether evidence is erroneous we must rely on theory-based expectations, and to judge the value of competing theories we rely on evidence, but to detect errors in
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In informal logic an objection, also known as a refutation, is a reason arguing against a premise, lemma or main contention. An objection to an objection is known as a rebuttal.