What is Evidence?

Evidence is factual information to proves a point or a claim in a logical manner. A claim without evidence is an opinion. An opinion is not fact, it is just an opinion. Feelings are not facts either. Anyone can make any claim and it\’s just an opinion until supported by facts. Evidence can be something like a video, a link to a web page, a link to a news story. But evidence varies with quality. Good evidence has verifiable facts that can be checked by a third party. As an example, a good study can give results that can be repeated by other scientists.

A claim

1. uses a logical argument.
2. and uses good quality evidence.

A claim missing either one of these is just an opinion unsupported by facts.

Making a claim

A person can make any claim, and without evidence that claim is just an opinion. But if they provide evidence, the evidence is weighed on its merits and evidence if that is good evidence, will help boost up their claim. If Person2 claims the evidence is somehow faulty, Person2 must then provide their own evidence about why the original evidence is faulty.

Good evidence vs bad

Good evidence has several key qualities:

1. It can be verified by other people on both sides of an issue.
2. It is based on facts.
3. It comes from a reliable source.

Bad evidence comes from an unreliable source, it cannot be verified by other people. One example is an anonymous source. These days, an anonymous source is simply admitting they have no facts to back up a claim. Even studies can be bad sources of evidence, as they can involve scientists who have a history of accepting bribes for producing unverifiable studies for big corporations or NGOs.

Here is the rough order of types of evidence starting with the best type of evidence.

1. Evidence agreed up on by different parties with different interests or different goals, and supported by a peer-reviewed study done by reliable scientists.
2. Evidence from an anonymous source.
3. No evidence.