Absense of evidence isn’t evidence of absense

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Why is this the case? Wouldn’t a lack of evidence hint at, but not necessarily prove that this could be the case?

In: Biology

17 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

In general, you can’t prove a negative.

You can’t prove I was never in a room. You can scour that room up and down, left and right, swabbing and fingerprinting and blacklighting and all of that, and you may not find a single thing.

But if I opened the door, stuck a toe in there, and closed the door, I was in the room. If the room was still a construction zone and I wore construction booties, stood in there, then left, there’d be no evidence I was ever in there. The lack of evidence doesn’t prove that I was never in that room.

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