5) What counts as good evidence for a claim?
Good evidence for a claim is definitely an evaluation system on a sliding scale. Since it’s already been mentioned what bad evidence is. I’ll leave this alone. But as for good evidence, I think it should contain some of the same things that make knowledge useful. The better the evidence, the more it adheres to the scientific method of evaluating a claim, both in principle and in spirit. For example, evidence should have been gathered and analyzed with high efficacy by the research team. Well-documented evidence, large sample pools, repeatable experiments. Evidence is data collected more often than not as quantitative data. One or several persons’ anecdotal evidence is not reliable. Yet, anecdotal evidence should be regarded as having some validity, especially among marginalized groups, since no science has let go of its discriminatory history and habits. The best evidence is from an academically reliable source. Even academically reliable sources need further investigation. The more fa...