Re: How Do We Know?

If this is a medical emergency, stop reading, log off, and dial 911!

This seems to be true. I asked a civil law lawyer of the continental law
tradition in europe, and the answer was at first "maybe, depends on the
case", and after a bit of nagging, the additional thought that
eyewitnesses can lie, and documents can be forged, but scientific evidence
is... "scientific".
>
But overall, my interpretation of the delphic answer from a lawyer of that
tradition is that Anonymous does seem to have a point, but that there is a
reluctance to answer with a "blanket rule" answer that X is better than Y,
and that all evidence is taken together when judging a case. In civil law,
documents is the main category and type of evidence.

In the real world, there are very few Boolean statements.  (Not
provable ones, anyway.)  Most things run on a scale of "generally well
accepted" (i.e.: gravity) to "most think it's false" (i.e.: the
Nigerian chap who wants to wire you $500K).  *Very* few things are
ever proven.  Even in mathematics, there are many gray areas.

Before I retired, I used to do a fair amount of peer review in my
field.  The *fastest* way a study would end up in my rejection stack
was to say: "This study will prove...", and that's all I'd read.

There's an old saying: "You can't prove a negative," which, taken at
face value is nonsense; however, it comes from the scientific method
wherein we *don't* prove the negative (aka: "null hypothesis").  It's
related to the "fallacy of affirming the consequent". (Google is your
friend)  E.g.: the person is found "not guilty" means they've been
proven innocent... ain't so!

Anyone who has ever taken Research 101 knows this stuff from chapter
one.