Evidence and credibility

 Introduction:

 Critical thinking teaches the skills needed to analyse successfully and evaluate arguments.
Arguments are a reason or reasons that must support a conclusion. These ones are designed to persuade and convince the reader that your argument is true. In order to do this, we would need and evidence that supports the argument. However, in some cases evidence is not totally convincing and a judgement about the credibility of the evidence is needed. Credible means believable. If we know that the argument is credible, then we might accept it.

 Sources of evidence:

 Evidence is always the information we use to support any idea in an argument. This evidence comes from a source, which could be an eyewitness, a newspaper report, a scientific journal, and many more. It is very important always to assess the credibility of the source, because if not the source is useless.

 Example:
Evidence: In 2003, there were 306,000 marriages and 167,000 divorces in the United Kingdom.
Source: Office of National Statistics, a government agency.

 Credibility criteria:
Credibility criteria is the combination of techniques that are used in critical thinking to asses the credibility of sources and the evidence provided.

 Neutrality:
Something neutral is impartial. It does not lie, distort the evidence, or present information to support one side of a subject.

 Vested interest:
Vested interest refers to having something to gain from supporting an specific point of view. This may lead to do anything needed in order to "win". In cases where vested interest is shown, the credibility of the source can be reduced. However, this is not always like this.The existence of a vested interest does not mean that there is a lie of a distorted evidence.

 Bias:
Vested interest can lead to bias. Bias means having a preference for a particular point of view and seeing ways in a specific way. Bias can reduce the credibility of the source, but it does not mean that the evidences will be influenced by this.

 Expertise:
When evidence is given by an expert, is always more credible. Their knowledge and skills makes us sure about what we are reading, we trust what they say from the experience they have. Nevertheless, sometimes experts get it wrong or the standards of expertise change over the years. Expertise is only credible when it's relevant.

 Reputation
Credibily is also based on a character's reputation. Generally, the higher the reputation of a source is, more credible it will be. However, an honesty and reliable reputation doesn't mean that the information provided is the correct one.

 Observation and eyewitness accounts
An eyewitness is one of the most, or even the most, credible evidences.The eyewitness observes an event. Someone gives an account of the event, like re-telling it. Sometimes little details might be changed. As a result, hearsay evidence is seen.
However, the credibility of the eyewitness has to be proved, since some factor could alternate the sequence of events seen.

 Corroboration
This means pieces of evidence that support each other and suggest the same ideas. Generally, this factor increases the credibility of the evidence. Nevertheless, in some cases the evidence is corroborative but not correct.

 Selectivity and representativeness
Evidence is ALWAYS selective, but, What kind of evidence is selected? On one hand, when the evidences just show one side of the situation, the credibility is reduced. On the other hand, when  balanced arguments are presented, the credibility increases.

 Context
This is used to know the context of the evidence or event (setting or situation in  which the evidence is produced). It is important since from the context you can obtain identifying factors that might affect the evidence.

 In conclusion, we can say that a combination of all these factors of credibility criteria can improve in a remarkable way the credibility of your evidence.

 Credibility and truth:
Credible means believable, not true. True means correct and accurate. Evidence not always has to be true, to be credible. Credibility and truth are not equals at all.