Probably the toughest thing a paranormal investigator can do is take a piece of evidence that they have collected and discard it. Partly it’s because it’s hard to discard something you found compelling and partly it’s because there’s no hard and fast rule to say when something is debunked.
Introducing Reasonable Doubt
However, there is a benchmark for evidence of any kind and it’s one that any television viewer knows well: reasonable doubt. Watch any courtroom drama and you’ll hear it mentioned frequently.
We’re talking about “reasonable doubt”. Evidence beyond a reasonable doubt is defined as “evidence so compelling that you would act on it and rely on it without hesitation in your own affairs. It does not mean absolute certainty.”
An investigator might apply this as follows: is this piece of evidence convincing enough that a jury would convict someone based on it? If you can come up with any reasonable counter-explanation, they most likely would not and you have introduced reasonable doubt.
Unreasonable Explanations
It seems simple to do, but you need another criterion – when is a counter explanation reasonable? Look carefully at the counter. How many coincidences does it require in order to debunk your evidence? Possibly the best example of an explanation that goes too far is from Men In Black when Agent K explains a UFO thusly:
“All right, Beatrice, there was no alien. The flash of light you saw in the sky was not a UFO. Swamp gas from a weather balloon was trapped in a thermal pocket and reflected the light from Venus.”
How many things have to go right for that to work as a piece of debunking?
In essence, this is employing Occam’s Razor to both evidence and debunking that evidence; the intention is to create evidence that will convince a skeptic that what has been captured is at least worthy of further investigation.
Why use this standard?
Very simply, the credibility of any investigator is in question every time they present evidence which can be easily debunked. If an investigator, or a group, has a standard by which they grade evidence it builds their credibility. It also means that when they have evidence that resists reasonable doubt, it is that much harder to dismiss out of hand. Skeptics and cynics alike would be forced to look, and work, a little harder to determine whether that evidence can be dismissed or debunked.
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