Evaluating Evidence and Authorities Unit 4 Reliability of Authorities • Characteristics of the person who is giving information determines the reliability. • Some of the ways in which we judge the reliability of authorities are: • • • • • Reputation Vested Interest Relevant experience or expertise Factors affecting someone’s judgement Corroboration Reputation • Record for being truthful or untruthful. • Habitual liar is an obvious case of someone whose statements are unreliable Vested Interest • When we have to judge between two conflicting pieces of information from two different people, we should consider whether one of those people has a vested interest in making us believe what they say. • Third person or neutral perspective should be looked at. Relevant experience or expertise • • • If someone was not in a position to have the relevant knowledge about the subject under discussion, then it would be merely accidental if their statements about the subject were true. There are a number of circumstances which prevent people from having the relevant knowledge. The subject under discussion may be a highly specialised subject which is understood only by those who have had appropriate education or training. People who are not experts can read about specialised subjects, and pass on information to us about such subjects, so we do not have to disbelieve people simply because they are not experts. Another circumstance in which someone would not be in a position to have the relevant knowledge would be where eye-witness testimony was crucial, and the person could not have seen clearly what happened – perhaps because of poor eyesight, or perhaps because he or she did not have a clear line of vision on the incident. Factors affecting someone’s judgement • Emotional stress, drugs and alcohol can affect one’s perception. • We can be distracted by other events which are happening concurrently. • We can forget important aspects of what has happened, particularly if some time elapses before we report an incident. Corroboration (validation) • Sometimes when we have evidence from more than one source, we find that two (or more) people agree in their descriptions of events – that is to say, their evidence corroborates the statements of others. • In these circumstances, unless there is any reason to think that the witnesses are attempting to mislead us, or any reason to think that one witness has attempted to influence others, we should regard corroboration as confirming the reliability of evidence Plausibility of claims • How plausible is this claim, or piece of evidence? • Rather than looking at the person Plausibility of claims examines whether the claim that a person is making is true or it could have happened. By looking at these points you can evaluate the evidences that has been provided to draw certain conclusions.
