Quotes about evidence

What it means to hold a belief based on evidence is, by definition, that one is open to the possibility that evidence might be discovered that would change one's mind. If no evidence would change one's mind, then one is not forming one's beliefs on the basis of evidence.

The most difficult thing to accept for people who work hard at forming their beliefs on the basis of evidence is that not everyone forms their beliefs in that way. [...] Many people believe what and how they do precisely because they do not formulate their beliefs on the basis of evidence-- not because they're lacking evidence.

Policing is about moving from the unknown to the known and then further—to the provable.

You see, the trouble with detectives is that they’re detectives and are literally trained not to believe anything they haven’t verified themselves.

Blackstone’s Police Operational Handbook recommends the ABC of serious investigation: Assume nothing, Believe nothing, and Check everything.

I wasn’t ready to believe in ghosts, but that’s the thing about empirical experience: it’s the real thing.

Knowledge of science can have a great impact on social and political policy. Students need to be told, clearly and directly, what statements are supported by the available evidence. It is not the teachers function to offer instead a contrived and unresolved “debate” in which one of the parties is an ill-defined position that lacks any evidence in its favor. To represent as equal ideas of unequal merit is to mislead and confuse. Because the consequences of so deceiving the students may be their later inability to perform their duties as conscientious and informed citizens, such educational practices ought to be recognized for the irresponsible charades they are.

“This is the worst excess of conjecture and wishful thinking,” snapped Jackson. “We don’t know if Isaac is capable of any of this.”

“He believes he is,” said Bi Wei.

“I once met a woman who believed she was abducted by aliens who looked like the Teletubbies,” Jackson shot back. “That doesn’t make it true.”

“Absence of proof,” said Bell, “is not proof of absence.”

Everything changes when we look at the evidence; what looks impossible actually happened.

Try to keep in mind one of the fundamental aspects of science: letting the evidence form belief rather than belief select evidence.

Theories were a dime a dozen. The partition that separated science and wishful thinking was evidence: observations and firm facts.