How Things Work - Doha Academy of Tertiary Studies

chaPteR 7
evidence
Bolstering Judgment and Reconnoitering
We usually start our research having some idea of how the thing
works. Whether it is software or a professional training program or the
relationship between anesthesiologists and surgeons that we will study,
we seldom go into it cold. We have some notions or expectations of what
we may find out. Gradually, we become more and more confident that
we will have something good to say about how the thing works. We will
say it with confidence if we have good evidence. The evidence doesn’t
make it true. The evidence makes us confident that what we are thinking
is right. We use evidence not only for bolstering our assertions but for
updating our design and refining our data collection.
We could say that all our planning and data gathering is to obtain
good quality evidence. That probably draws too much attention to the
evidence and not enough to the interpretation of the evidence, but it
implies what we already know, that evidence can be of poor quality and
evidence can be of good quality, and good is better.
Actual evidence have I none,
But my aunt’s charwoman’s sister’s son
Heard a policeman, on his beat
Say to a housemaid in Downing Street
That he had a brother, who had a friend,
Who knew when the war was going to end. (Reginald Arkell, in Bartlett
1968, p. 965)
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