Quotes About Evidence

When people are committed to a belief and a course of action, clear disconfirming evidence may simply result in deepened conviction and increased proselyting. But there does seem to be a point at which the disconfirming evidence has mounted sufficiently to cause the belief to be rejected.

It was the wiser course, she thought, to deny the evidence of her senses, than her good sense.

sample size. Sample sizes can be calculated not only for randomized trials but

Physics isn't a religion. If it were, we'd have a much easier time raising money.

Your faith was strong, but you needed proof...

There is also the memory of the hut in the mind of the traveler-- and in the mind of the reader reading this description. Wabi-sabi, in its purest, most idealised form, is precisely about these delicate traces, this faint evidence, at the border of nothingness.

As the psychologist Jonathan Haidt put it, there are two ways to get at the truth: the way of the scientist and the way of the lawyer.

When we are in the grasp of illusion – or, for that matter, whenever we have a new idea – instead of searching for ways to prove our ideas wrong, we usually attempt to prove them correct. Psychologists call this the confirmation bias, and it presents a major impediment of our ability to break free from the misinterpretation of randomness.

there are two ways to get at the truth: the way of the scientist and the way of the lawyer. Scientists gather evidence, look for regularities, form theories explaining their observations, and test them. Attorneys begin with a conclusion they want to convince others of and then seek evidence that supports it, while also attempting to discredit evidence that doesn't.

A corrupção é um fenômeno secreto, e as evidências sobre ela são indiretas. A maior parte dos índices que medem a corrupção é baseada na percepção sobre sua existência, que é tanto maior quanto mais a corrupção é combatida.

The kind of knowledge which is supported only by observations and is not yet proved must be carefully distinguished from the truth; it is gained by induction, as we usually say. Yet we have seen cases in which mere induction led to error.

In his profession, Wright had seen horror stacked on horror, plenty of evidence that there was no shortage of hell right here on earth. As to what had kept him sane in the face of all that he had witnessed, it was a simple sense of purpose. "It is that simple, John," Wright said. "There is evil. And there is good.

Where certainty is often a refusal to think, to question, to reason - a refusal to engage in the kind of Socratic dialogue with unbelief that the Quran urges - faith requires an awareness of the possibility of being wrong, which is why it is perhaps best defined in Hebrews 11:1 as "the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not see.

The light cast by the first rays of the morning sun shining on the face of a company of travelers will be evidence that a new day is coming. The travelers are not the source of that witness but only the locus of it. To see for oneself that it is true, that a new day is really coming, one must turn around, face the opposite way, be converted. And then one's own face will share the same brightness and become part of the evidence. This

There is a abundant evidence that all social movements are to be explained by a variety of circumstances and that the ideological sources to which they appeal, and to which they seek to remain faithful, are only one of the factors determining the form they assume and their patterns of thought and action.

Scientists have proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that there is life after death -- though they say it's virtually impossible to get decent Chinese food.

He'd spent too long being disappointed by the world - he'd spent so many years pining for something like this, some proof that the real world wasn't the only world, and coping with the overwhelming evidence that it in fact was.

She considered herself too smart to believe in things she had no evidence for, and that behaved in ways that violated every principle she'd ever observed or heard plausibly spoken about. And she considered herself too tough-minded to believe in things just because they made her feel better.

Quentin did a magic trick. Nobody noticed. They picked their way along the cold, uneven sidewalk together: James, Julia, and Quentin. James and Julia held hands. That's how things were now. The sidewalk wasn't quite wide enough, so Quentin trailed after them, like a sulky child. He would rather have been alone with Julia, or just alone period, but you couldn't have everything. Or at least the available evidence pointed overwhelmingly to that conclusion.

He'd spent too long being disappointed by the world—he'd spent so many years pining for something like this, some proof that the real world wasn't the only world, and coping with the overwhelming evidence that it in fact was. He wasn't going to be suckered in just like that. It was like finding a clue that somebody you'd buried and mourned wasn't really dead after all.

We must never assume that which is incapable of proof.

And then there are fossils. Whenever anybody tries to tell me that they believe the Earth was created in seven days, I reach for a fossil and go "Fossil!" And if they keep talking, I throw it just over their head.

If you find that the reader of popular romances--however uneducated a reader, however bad the romances--goes back to his old favourites again and again, then you have pretty good evidence that they are to him a sort of poetry.

And then there are fossils. Whenever anybody tries to tell me that they believe it took place in seven days, I reach for a fossil and go "fossil!" And if they keep talking I throw it just over their head.