The application of Critical Theory to what counts as evidence in science—examining how evidentiary standards are established, who benefits, and what forms of evidence are marginalized. Critical Theory of Scientific Evidence asks: Why is quantitative evidence privileged over qualitative? Why are some forms of testimony dismissed? Who decides what counts as good evidence? How have evidentiary standards been used to exclude marginalized knowers? It doesn't reject evidence but insists that evidentiary standards are never neutral—they're shaped by power, history, and context.
"That's just anecdotal, not real evidence. Critical Theory of Scientific Evidence asks: anecdotal by whose standards? Experience is evidence too—it's just not the kind that fits in spreadsheets. Evidentiary hierarchies reflect power: who gets to define evidence, and whose knowledge gets excluded. Critical theory insists on evidence that includes, not just evidence that measures."
by Abzugal Nammugal Enkigal March 4, 2026
Get the Critical Theory of Scientific Evidence mug.The broad application of Critical Theory to evidence in all domains—scientific, legal, historical, personal—examining how evidence is defined, evaluated, and deployed, and how power operates in these processes. Critical Theory of Evidence asks: What counts as evidence in different contexts? Who decides? How do evidentiary standards reflect social hierarchies? What forms of evidence are systematically marginalized? Drawing on epistemology, law and society, and critical methodology, it insists that evidence is never just evidence—it's always embedded in power relations. Understanding evidence requires understanding who gets to define it, who gets to provide it, and who gets to judge it.
"Where's your evidence? they demand. Critical Theory of Evidence asks: what kind of evidence? From whom? Collected how? Evidence isn't neutral; it's produced in contexts of power. The evidence of the powerful is amplified; the evidence of the powerless is dismissed. Critical theory insists on asking: whose evidence counts, and who decides?"
by Abzugal Nammugal Enkigal March 4, 2026
Get the Critical Theory of Evidence mug.A framework proposing that evidence itself is elastic—that what counts as evidence can stretch across contexts, disciplines, and cultures without breaking into irrelevance. Evidence Elasticity suggests that evidence isn't a fixed category (only RCTs, only quantitative data) but a stretchy concept: anecdotal evidence stretches into clinical evidence, qualitative evidence stretches into quantitative, experiential evidence stretches into empirical. The theory identifies evidence's elastic limits: when does stretching become irrelevance? When does evidence become anecdote? Understanding evidence requires understanding its stretch. A meta-framework studying how conceptions of evidence stretch across history, culture, and discipline. The Elasticity of Evidence examines how evidence has been defined—from legal evidence to scientific evidence to historical evidence—and how these definitions stretch under pressure from new domains. It asks: what are the limits of evidence's stretch? When does a new form of evidence break rather than stretch? How does evidence recover from crises (the replication crisis stretching evidence standards)? It's evidence reflecting on its own history and possibilities.
Theory of Evidence Elasticity "In medicine, they demand RCTs; in anthropology, ethnography is evidence. Evidence Elasticity says both are evidence—just stretched for different contexts. The question isn't what counts as evidence; it's how far you can stretch the concept before it breaks."
by Nammugal March 4, 2026
Get the Theory of Evidence Elasticity mug.The theory that evidence exists on a spectrum, not as a binary category of "evidence" vs. "not evidence." The Evidence Spectrum recognizes that claims can be supported by evidence to varying degrees, in different dimensions, from different sources. A single anecdote is evidence—weak evidence, low on the spectrum, but still evidence. A randomized controlled trial is stronger evidence, higher on the spectrum. A meta-analysis of many trials is stronger still. The spectrum includes many dimensions: strength, relevance, reliability, independence, replicability. The Theory of the Evidence Spectrum calls for evaluating where evidence falls on multiple axes, not simply asking "is there evidence?" The question is never whether evidence exists but how good it is, how relevant, how reliable—where it sits on the spectrum.
Example: "He dismissed her anecdote as 'not evidence.' The Theory of the Evidence Spectrum showed why that was wrong: it was evidence, just low on the spectrum—weak, but still evidence. Dismissing it entirely was itself unscientific. She wasn't claiming it proved anything; she was claiming it pointed somewhere. The spectrum let them discuss where it fell, not whether it counted."
by Dumu The Void March 7, 2026
Get the Theory of the Evidence Spectrum mug.A framework revealing how evidence itself can mislead—not because it's false, but because of how it's produced, selected, and interpreted. Fooled by Evidence Theory shows how publication bias (only positive results published), selection bias (only convenient populations studied), and interpretation bias (only confirming evidence noticed) create an evidence base that systematically misrepresents reality. We are fooled when we trust "the evidence" without asking how it was made, who made it, and what was left out.
Fooled by Evidence Theory "The evidence supports our policy, they announced. But the evidence was funded by corporations, published in pay-to-play journals, and selected from dozens of studies that showed the opposite. Fooled by Evidence: trusting what's presented without asking what's missing. Evidence can lie—not by falsifying, but by selecting. We are fooled by what we're shown, never seeing what's hidden."
by Dumu The Void March 8, 2026
Get the Fooled by Evidence Theory mug.The strategic demand for evidence that cannot exist in principle, often used to dismiss claims that are nevertheless well-supported by the evidence that does exist. Unlike demanding more evidence (which can be reasonable), this fallacy demands evidence of a fundamentally different kind—usually the kind that would require time travel, omniscience, or violation of physical law to obtain. "Where were you at 3:17 AM on June 12th, 2008?" when discussing a general pattern of behavior. "Show me a fossil of the exact moment one species became another" when discussing evolution. It weaponizes the impossibility of perfect records against the possibility of any knowledge at all.
Example: "He demanded security footage from a store that burned down in 1985 to prove I shopped there—pure Fallacy of Impossible Evidence, since the evidence he required was literally ashes."
by Dumu The Void March 11, 2026
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