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Evidence is that which provides a reason/justification to change beliefs. When it was noticed that people working with cows (and who were therefore often expos
by drdeca 2y ago
Evidence is that which provides a reason/justification to change beliefs.
When it was noticed that people working with cows (and who were therefore often exposed to cow pox) didn’t seem to get chickenpox, this seems to me an example of a collection of anecdotes, and yet it was evidence.
- bluefirebrand 2y agoIt was evidence enough to justify forming a hypothesis and getting funding for further study, but not evidence to consider it a scientific conclusion. Drawing generalizable scientific conclusions is a high bar to reach but it should be. Clearing that high bar is what is going to actually produce real value for society A research project that produces a small collection of anecdotes is not scientific research, it is journalism. There's nothing wrong with that. Those anecdotes might be important to share, they might be interesting to hear, they might be historically relevant. But we cannot draw scientific conclusions from them, which is what we should expect from scientific research projects
- drdeca 2y agoThat, I think I can agree with. It seems to me reasonable to say that the requirements for something to qualify as “scientific evidence” are stricter than to qualify as “evidence”, and that anecdotes don’t qualify as “scientific evidence”.