[RyEgswuCsn]

I'd say the difference is pretty simple: true evidence needs to be verifiable. Scientific studies provide evidence by describing the experiments/procedures needed to reproduce its claims.

Evidence for untrue things is still evidence, if it is verifiable. However, there is such thing as "no evidence". Crazy Carl's claim by itself would not be verifiable, therefore it is not evidence.

[ironmagma]

Needs to be verifiable for what purpose? Essentially all evidence is unverifiable, including the things you see out your eyeball when driving. At the very least, it's not reproducible that "car X had their turn signal on." Yet you risk your life on this information.

We should have different standards of evidence for different scenarios. If Bob ate a suspicious species of carrot and ended up in the hospital, that's a reasonable indication to not eat that type of carrot, even though it's not a controlled experiment and technically anecdotal evidence. You don't need N=10 people to end up in the hospital to listen to a story.

[pixl97]

> that's a reasonable indication to not eat that type of carrot,

That's also why we avoided eating non-poisonous tomatoes for centuries leaving food proverbably on the table. The world experienced far more rapid progression when we started demanding reproducible evidence for reproducible events.

[ironmagma]

Which is a perfectly reasonable survival strategy. No, you might not reach a global maximum with it, but a local maximum is probably good enough in exchange for people not dying due to unknown causes.

[FrustratedMonky]

There is no evidence that "ironmagma is a not a troll".

See, the 'no evidence' is used as a rhetorical device to make something 'appear' true.

Falling back on the old 'all evidence is questionable' because our eyes can deceive, and all perception is subjective, so all of reality is in doubt, is a rabbit whole.

Sure we live in a 'numinal' world. That doesn't mean we can't use thermometers to tell the temperature, even thought temperature itself is a construct.

[ironmagma]

I think the actual thing is that anecdotal evidence is actually quite compelling evidence. You can drive a car for days on end all on anecdotal evidence, successfully. It's just that it's less compelling than lots of anecdotes (data in aggregate).

[FrustratedMonky]

Ok. I think we are just arguing about different levels of 'rigor'.

Of course, you can absorb information, observations, into your brain, and make judgments, like the road is wet, the light is red. It is fairly subjective, not recorded. Whether you report to the police that you swear the light was green. or Crazy uncle says aliens ate his turnips.

They are really almost about the same level of verifiability. Then it is just probabilities that make us really dismiss the alien hypothesis.

That is a lot different from forming a hypothesis, performing a controlled experience and taking measurements to prove/disprove hypothesis.

When troubleshooting, I will take in all observations, no matter how strange. But I wouldn't say they are the problem without further verification.

[sokoloff]

> There is no evidence that "ironmagma is a not a troll".

I think there is evidence: https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=ironmagma

Trolls would reasonably able to be detected by the contents of their posts/comments. Looking over the comment history, I see an absence of evidence that they are a troll and, in this case, absence of evidence is evidence of absence [because we can reasonably exhaust all of the "trials" [past comments]].

[FrustratedMonky]

That is if someone looks. And has the same subjective view to interpret those comments.

I've seen plenty of people watch the exact same debate, and each believes 100% that their side wont hands down. Of course "there is no evidence" one side won or not.

The point is that "there is no evidence" is being used to promote the opposite views.

So I can disparage ironmagma in a title of an article, and all the reader who flips through them is left with impression that "ironmagma must be a troll, lot's of good people think so, and there is no evidence he isn't".

I probably should have come up with better example. But there is "no evidence" that the outcome would be different.

[brightball]

Agree this completely. So much scientific evidence I see published is just survey results from participants...which is sometimes just marketing or question phrasing. It's often enough to run with a headline though.

The standard for that evidence should be very different than the standard for reproducible physics, chemistry and biology experiments.

Other times it's just an extrapolation of a preexisting data set. Running this query produced this result.

[gumby]

> So much scientific evidence I see published is just survey results from participants

Don’t forget the likely bias that you are talking about scientific results in the press, which is a negligible subset of scientific work and which is biased towards humans, and sociological studies in particular.

From you comment I doubt you’re seeing much work in insect embryology or slippage in gravel pile formation (I don’t run across that stuff either)

[plastic_enjoyer]

> Agree this completely. So much scientific evidence I see published is just survey results from participants...

> The standard for that evidence should be very different than the standard for reproducible physics, chemistry and biology experiments.

I don't really see why we should treat evidence coming from surveys differently than evidence coming from physics, chemistry or biology experiments as long as surveys are well constructed, fulfill the criterion of validity and reliability and are reproducible. Yes, they are not 'hard facts' but often the only option to measure latent variables or fuzzy constructs. If they do this in a reproducible way I don't see the issue here.

On the other hand, 'hard sciences' such as neuroscience and medical science have a big problem with non-reproducible studies, even though they use more 'objective' measurement methods.

[GeekyBear]

> true evidence needs to be verifiable

Scientific evidence needs to be repeatable.

If others perform the same experiment, they should get the same experimental result.

Once you start exploring the views of individuals and groups, you're more in the realm of the social sciences than hard science.

[gumby]

> > true evidence needs to be verifiable

> Scientific evidence needs to be repeatable.

I think the GP comment had it right.

Consider I make some cosmological prediction based on Bob’ observational data (“stars with this spectrum mostly contain elements X and Y”). It does little good to repeat my analysis, which is entirely done on a piece of paper or in a computer program.

But Alice could say, “Well if that’s true, then this other thing would have to be true too” and go check that.

That’s the difference between “verifiable” and “repeatable”.

Sometimes “repeatable” is a sensible form of verification. Last year we spent 9 months trying to reproduce results from an important (to us) paper. Eventually we came up with a reliable process to reproduce the results of the paper — the hypothesis was correct — but it looks like the author just saw some signal a few times, and didn’t really demonstrate the principle they were trying to validate. We couldn’t use the same process described in the paper.

Since we can now get the result whenever we want we consider the theory valid.

[throwawaymaths]

> Scientific evidence needs to be repeatable

This isn't even true. Suppose a supernova happens and you gather a bunch of data. That's not really repeatable.

Same goes for lots of things in evobio. Clinical reports of one-off events, etc.

[pixl97]

Supernovas go off all the time, we would not use them as a standard candle if the did not.

If you gather a bunch of data on that supernova, you have evidence that supernova exploded. You don't have data on the nature of supernovas until you capture a wide range of them.

[throwawaymaths]

I apologize, I'm not claiming that no aspect of supernovas is observed more than once!

But so if you see something particularly unusual about that supernova (which happens a lot), it might be non reproducible, and you just have to live with that fact.

For example, multimodal observation of gravitational waves is still n=1

[pixl97]

But most of these things are expected to be 'reproducible' given a long enough observation frame. For example when LIGO comes back online I expect we'll see more multimodal observations of grav waves soon enough. And the galaxy is filled with trillions of stars so over time the likelihood of equivalent behavior approaches 1. Most of these things are just chemistry following the entropy curve.

When 'intelligence' is involved it can be a little more tricky as we tend to pull some tricks that seemingly violate entropy at least on a local scale (that is systems at the local scale can become more ordered), which means it can take a lot of effort to the thermodynamic path a system took to get into its current configuration.

[throwawaymaths]

Are they? Do we expect to see another "wow" signal?

[naasking]

Not sure it's that straightforward. Case studies are anecdotal data of this sort, you just have to understand the limitations of this sort of evidence.

You could presumably check if Carl suffers from regular hallucinations, maybe run him through an fMRI to check if he's lying (assuming they can make that reliable), and so on. Each check increases confidence in the claim, even though it will never by itself be persuasive.

[kortilla]

There isn’t a reliable lie detector though. There is a reason the saying is “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”.

[dekhn]

Do non-extraordinary claims require non-extraordinary evidence?

[tsimionescu]

Yes? If I claim my name is Tudor, many people will just believe me outright without checking my papers or anything - a non-extraordinar claim doesn't require extraordinary evidence. If I claim I am the Pope, people will want more evidence than my saying so.

[RyEgswuCsn]

That's not how logic works.

The equivalent statement is "extraordinary evidence doesn't necessarily imply extraordinary claims".

[dekhn]

My question is, let's say I discover something new that is totally consistent with existing paradigms. Do I need to provide less experimental evidence than somebody who is claiming something that isn't?

[pixl97]

I think your statement is more one of definitions of words and their meanings then once of science...

Lets say that somehow humans had not mixed baking soda and vinegar together before today. You decide to mix these things and get a mild foamy eruption that is cool. You do it twice and the same thing happens.

In this 'ordinary' example I would say you need less evidence to make your claims because the means of reproduction of the experiment and testing are within the reach of almost everybody. This could be quickly validated across the globe, and the reproducibility is evidence.

Now, if you require a billion dollar machine and a year of time to reproduce the experiment, you need to provide a lot of damned evidence so you don't waste a lot of scientists time and money that could be used for better things. Same with any experiments on people and/or the environment that can have effects that cannot be recovered from.

[dekhn]

Scientific evidence and decision making typically isn't done logically. Nearly everything, if not everything, is done as probabilistic analysis.

[smsm42]

If you get a speeding ticket, likely the evidence is the word of the police officer who clocked you speeding. There's no way to go back in time, stand next to the officer and verify he actually directed the speed measuring device to your care and observed the number. Even if there's an audit trail - most of cases have nothing of the sort - it's extremely hard to verify it beyond any possibility of error. Other ticketable offenses - like rolling over stop or reckless driving - may have even less possible verification. And yet, if you tell the judge "your honor, there's absolutely no evidence I was doing that", while the police officer is standing right there testifying you did it, you probably won't find too much sympathy. Obviously, your understanding of what constitutes "true evidence" is not widely accepted.

[RyEgswuCsn]

We are talking about different kind of evidence here. There are two sense entries under the word "evidence" per Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary[1]:

1. the facts, signs or objects that make you believe that something is true 2. the information that is used in court to try to prove something

I was talking about sense 1, you were talking about sense 2.

I think the article is also about sense 1 of the word "evidence".

[1]: https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/englis...

[smsm42]

It's the same thing. The court just has more procedure around it, but outside the court it's the same thing. If somebody tells you "I saw John dining with Jack's wife last night at the restaurant" then unless you hired a private detective or the restaurant has cameras inside and for some reason is willing to grant you access to the recordings, there's no way for you to verify this claim. However, claiming "there's no evidence that happened" is nonsense - you just heard the evidence, and any reasonable person would conclude you did. Does it make you believe it's true, by itself? That depends, how much do you trust the person who told you that? How much are you sure they aren't mistaken? You seem to be confusing "evidence" with "ultimate proof" - and the Oxford is not doing its best job to set you straight, to be honest - if something makes you believe it's true, it's certainly evidence, but not all evidence will make you instantly believe whatever it suggests it's true - you would need certain quality and quantity of evidence for it to become proof.

What is worse, the media manipulators know that distinction. They do not actually confuse it - they know "without ultimate proof" and "without evidence" are different things. They never use it interchangeably, as it would happen if they, like you, were confusing the two. Instead, they use "no evidence" when they should have said "no ultimate proof" or "evidence, insufficient to make a definite conclusion" - to confuse you and present the matter as if there's actually only one possible conclusion, and you shouldn't even try to inquire about what it's based on, since there's literally nothing - "no evidence" - that you could look at. This is usually false, because if there was truly nothing, there would be little point of them trying to convince you. What they are trying to do is to prevent you from considering the evidence there exists, by falsely claiming "there's no evidence" and thus you should accept the conclusion pre-made for you. It doesn't mean if you consider the evidence you'd necessarily arrive at the opposite conclusion - but they are not willing to take the risk, they do not trust you. You can take that as another piece of evidence for how strong their argument actually is.

[RyEgswuCsn]

> claiming "there's no evidence that happened" is nonsense - you just heard the evidence, and any reasonable person would conclude you did.

I am not sure about that. If someone claims that you had stole something from a store, which you know you didn't, responding with something like "where is your evidence/you have no evidence" sounds perfectly reasonable to me.

[smsm42]

if they say they saw you stealing - yes, that's evidence. If they just say "you stole" then yes, the correct question would be "why do you think so, on what evidence" - but a first-hand experience is definitely evidence. Moreover, often it'd be the only evidence available (not all stores have 100% video coverage). Of course, as always, the purported witness could also be lying, but if they claim they personally saw you stealing, this definitely counts at least as evidence, if not proof.

[concordDance]

> true evidence needs to be verifiable

"true evidence" should probably be replaced with "scientific evidence". If you have 10 witness on the stand, all who say they saw Bob shoot Alice then that is evidence that Bob shot Alice, even if we can't actually reproduce the shooting.

[RyEgswuCsn]

I would argue that true evidence (for a claim) can be defined as such piece of information that, when a third party is invited to examine it, they would arrive at the same conclusion as what was claimed.

Scientific evidence ought to meet the standard. If someone produces a video showing Bob shot Alice (let's assume faking the video is technically impossible), that would also constitute "true evidence". In that sense, I wouldn't consider witness' testimonies "true evidence".

[hnfong]

I agree with the other replies that "true evidence must be verifiable" should only apply to scientific evidence.

It's a fact that legal evidence in court does not need to be "verifiable". There are rules for what counts as admissible evidence of course (complex rules at that), but AFAIK none of those requirements is "verifiable".

As I suggested in another comment, there's a big difference on how to evaluate scientific claims (which is required to be reproducible) and some random factual claim (eg. what did I have for breakfast). There is no way I can give "true, verfiable evidence" for what I ate for breakfast, but generally people take my word for it, and my word is "good enough" evidence.

There are other types of claims where, because the evidence is inherently hard to obtain, even "low quality" evidence is taken into account, eg. digging up a clay pot could be evidence of civilization or human settlement in an area. (Surely no one in their right mind would say to support such a claim you need to somehow independently verify it, right?)

[pixl97]

>There is no way I can give "true, verfiable evidence" for what I ate for breakfast

This depends how far you are in the process of turning your breakfast into poop.

As for the digging up of the pots... it depends on the exact nature of the claim.

Digging up of the clay pot does mean there where humans with clay pots at that place some time in the past. The settlement claim is a larger claim, if they were travelers that lost their pots there, that's a lot different than the pots being buried in a basement of a permanent building. Finding lots of the same kind of pots over a wide area and scale of time show that a certain civilization (may?) have existed in that area.