What Makes Strong Evidence?
Not all accurate information carries the same evidential weight. A detail may be highly specific yet contribute little to identifying the person being represented. Another may appear ordinary but sharply distinguish one individual from everyone else who could reasonably fit. Understanding strong evidence therefore requires more than asking whether something was correct. Accuracy, specificity, relevance, distinctiveness, and convergence each describe something different. This chapter examines those distinctions, how several pieces of information can strengthen one another without being counted twice, and why evidential weight depends upon what information actually contributes within the communication rather than how impressive it sounds.
Book Three: Evidential Mediumship
A Common Question
What actually makes one piece of evidence stronger than another?
Answer
Strong evidence helps narrow who or what could reasonably fit the information being presented.
That does not depend upon one quality alone.
Information must first be accurate enough to correspond with the person or circumstance.
Specificity can narrow what is being stated.
Relevance determines whether the detail contributes to the identity or context under consideration.
Distinctiveness tells us how much it separates one possibility from others.
And several genuinely separate details may gain additional weight when they converge upon the same individual.
No formula determines the result.
The important question is not:
How impressive is this information?
It is:
What does this information actually help establish?
Introduction
Some evidential statements feel stronger than others.
It is tempting to explain that difference by saying:
the detail was more unusual,
more personal,
more emotional,
or more specific.
Sometimes those qualities matter.
None determines evidential strength by itself.
Consider two statements:
“He had a brother.”
and:
“He always wrote the number seven with a line through the middle, even after everyone else in the family stopped doing it.”
The first may be completely accurate.
The second may seem comparatively trivial.
Yet within a particular family, the second detail might identify one person immediately while the first could fit several.
What matters is not how important a fact appears in ordinary life.
What matters is the evidential work it performs.
Strong Evidence Narrows Possibilities
A useful way to think about evidential strength is to ask:
How much does this information reduce the number of people, relationships, events, or circumstances that could reasonably fit?
Some information supports an identification without narrowing it very far.
Other information separates one possibility from the rest.
Both can matter.
They simply contribute differently.
Accurate Does Not Automatically Mean Strong
Suppose a medium says:
“She had curtains in her home.”
The statement may be perfectly accurate.
It also describes millions of people.
Now suppose the information is:
“She kept one curtain permanently pinned back with a silver hair clip because the fastening had broken, and she never replaced it.”
That detail may belong to far fewer people.
Accuracy is necessary.
But accuracy alone does not tell us how much identifying value the information carries.
Strength Is Not Spectacle
Strong evidence does not need to sound astonishing.
A rare object may attract attention.
An obscure date may sound impressive.
A highly emotional statement may move the recipient deeply.
None of those reactions determines evidential weight.
The question remains:
What does the information distinguish?
A modest detail can carry substantial weight if very few reasonable alternatives remain after it is placed correctly.
Context Changes What a Detail Contributes
The same information can contribute very different circumstances.
A first name may narrow identity considerably in one family and almost not at all in another.
A reference to a particular town may be highly useful when only one relative had a connection there.
The same town may contribute little if half the family lived there.
Its evidential value does not exist independently of context.
It depends upon what that detail contributes within the actual communication.