Question · Seed idea · last reconsidered August 17, 2026
What counts as evidence?
A question about the standards a claim has to meet before it counts as support.
Open question — no answer required
- Territories
- Knowing
- Kind of question
- Epistemic
About what separates evidence from a claim that merely sounds plausible or is repeated often.
Why it matters
Every field answers this question, and almost none of them answer it out loud. The standard is inherited with the training, which means disagreements about whether something has been shown are usually disagreements about the standard, conducted as if they were about the facts.
Tensions
- A standard strict enough to exclude every bad claim excludes most of the good ones too.
- The standard is set by the same community that is judged against it.
Positions taken
has response
- Normal science does not test its frameClaim
What counts as evidence is settled by the paradigm, not prior to it.
Questions this opens
questions
- Where does reality enter the loop?Question
A standard is only as good as the point at which something outside the process gets to object.
Connected ideas
questions
is questioned by
- What do I actually know?Question
The inventory is worthless until the standard it is measured against is named.
Paths through this question
appears in
- How a Field DecidesPath
Start with the question every field answers silently.
Explore this question in the map
Continue exploring
- ClaimNormal science does not test its frameKuhn's account of research as puzzle-solving inside a framework nobody is currently testing.
- ConceptEvidenceWhat is offered in support of a claim, and what makes it count.
- ConceptVerificationThe act of checking a claim or output against something independent of the process that produced it.
- QuestionWhat do I actually know?A question about the gap between feeling confident and having grounds for confidence.