Evidence-Based Puritanism

A purity culture within communities that elevate "evidence-based" as the supreme standard of legitimacy, where proper relationship to evidence becomes a test of virtue and belonging. Evidence-based puritanism demands that true members base all claims on approved kinds of evidence (usually quantitative, experimental, published in high-impact journals), treat other forms of knowledge as illegitimate, and maintain the purity of evidentiary standards against contamination by alternative ways of knowing. Members compete to demonstrate their evidentiary rigor, their commitment to "what the evidence shows," their willingness to dismiss anything that doesn't meet their standards. The result is a community that claims to value evidence while being dogmatically closed to the full range of human knowledge, treating "evidence-based" as a club rather than a commitment.

Example: "She cited decades of community experience, and they dismissed it as 'anecdotal'—Evidence-Based Puritanism, where only their kind of evidence counts, and anyone who doesn't have it is simply ignored."

Evidence-Based Puritanism by Abzugal Nammugal Enkigal March 14, 2026