The burden of proof (
Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...
: ''onus probandi'', shortened from ''Onus probandi incumbit ei qui dicit, non ei qui negat'') is the obligation on a party in a dispute to provide sufficient
warrant for its position.
Holder of the burden
When two parties are in a discussion and one makes a
claim that the other disputes, the one who makes the claim typically has a ''burden of proof'' to justify or substantiate that claim especially when it challenges a perceived ''status quo''. This is also stated in
Hitchens's razor, which declares that "what may be asserted without evidence, may be dismissed without evidence." Carl Sagan proposed a related criterion – "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" – which is known as the
Sagan standard
The Sagan standard is a neologism abbreviating the aphorism that "''extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence''" (ECREE). It is named after science communicator Carl Sagan who used the exact phrase on his television program ''Cosmos'' ...
.
While certain kinds of arguments, such as logical
syllogisms, require
mathematical
Mathematics is an area of knowledge that includes the topics of numbers, formulas and related structures, shapes and the spaces in which they are contained, and quantities and their changes. These topics are represented in modern mathematics ...
or strictly
logical proofs, the standard for
evidence to meet the burden of proof is usually determined by context and community standards and conventions.
Philosophical debate can devolve into arguing about who has the burden of proof about a particular claim. This has been described as "burden tennis" or the "onus game".
Shifting the burden of proof
One way in which one would attempt to shift the burden of proof is by committing a logical fallacy known as the
argument from ignorance
Argument from ignorance (from la, argumentum ad ignorantiam), also known as appeal to ignorance (in which ''ignorance'' represents "a lack of contrary evidence"), is a fallacy in informal logic. It asserts that a proposition is true because it h ...
. It occurs when either a
proposition
In logic and linguistics, a proposition is the meaning of a declarative sentence. In philosophy, " meaning" is understood to be a non-linguistic entity which is shared by all sentences with the same meaning. Equivalently, a proposition is the no ...
is assumed to be true because it has not yet been proven false or a proposition is assumed to be false because it has not yet been proven true.
Proving a negative
A
negative claim is the opposite of an affirmative or positive claim. It asserts the non-existence or exclusion of something.
A negative claim may or may not exist as a counterpoint to a previous claim. A
proof of impossibility
In mathematics, a proof of impossibility is a proof that demonstrates that a particular problem cannot be solved as described in the claim, or that a particular set of problems cannot be solved in general. Such a case is also known as a negative ...
or an
evidence of absence
Evidence of absence is evidence of any kind that suggests something is missing or that it does not exist. What counts as evidence of absence has been a subject of debate between scientists and philosophers. It is often distinguished from absence ...
argument are typical methods to fulfill the burden of proof for a negative claim.
Application
In public discourse
Burden of proof is an important concept in the
public arena of ideas. Once participants in discourse establish common
assumption
Assumption, in Christianity, refers to the Assumption of Mary, a belief in the taking up of the Virgin Mary into heaven.
Assumption may also refer to:
Places
* Assumption, Alberta, Canada
* Assumption, Illinois, United States
** Assumption Tow ...
s, the mechanism of burden of proof helps to ensure that all parties contribute productively, using relevant arguments.
In law
In a legal dispute, one party is initially presumed to be correct and gets the benefit of the doubt, while the other side bears the burden of proof. When a party bearing the burden of proof meets their burden, the burden of proof switches to the other side. Burdens may be of different kinds for each party, in different phases of litigation. The
burden of production is a minimal burden to produce at least enough evidence for the
trier of fact
A trier of fact or finder of fact is a person or group who determines which facts are available in a legal proceeding (usually a trial) and how relevant they are to deciding its outcome. To determine a fact is to decide, from the evidence present ...
to ''consider'' a disputed claim.
[''Criminal Law - Cases and Materials'', 7th ed. 2012, ]Wolters Kluwer Law & Business
Wolters Kluwer N.V. () is a Dutch information services company. The company is headquartered in Alphen aan den Rijn, Netherlands (Global) and Philadelphia, United States (corporate). Wolters Kluwer in its current form was founded in 1987 with a m ...
; John Kaplan, Robert Weisberg, Guyora Binder,
/ref> After litigants have met the burden of production and their claim is being considered by a trier of fact, they have the burden of persuasion, that enough evidence has been presented to persuade the trier of fact that their side is correct. There are different ''standards'' of persuasiveness ranging from a preponderance of the evidence
In a legal dispute, one party has the burden of proof to show that they are correct, while the other party had no such burden and is presumed to be correct. The burden of proof requires a party to produce evidence to establish the truth of facts ...
, where there is just enough evidence to tip the balance, to proof beyond a reasonable doubt, as in United States criminal courts.
The burden of proof is usually on the person who brings a claim in a dispute. It is often associated with the Latin maxim
Maxim or Maksim may refer to:
Entertainment
* ''Maxim'' (magazine), an international men's magazine
** ''Maxim'' (Australia), the Australian edition
** ''Maxim'' (India), the Indian edition
*Maxim Radio, ''Maxim'' magazine's radio channel on Sir ...
''semper necessitas probandi incumbit ei qui agit'', a translation of which in this context is: "the necessity of proof always lies with the person who lays charges."
The party that does not carry the burden of proof carries the benefit of assumption of being correct, they are presumed to be correct, until the burden shifts after presentation of evidence by the party bringing the action. An example is in an American criminal case, where there is a presumption of innocence
The presumption of innocence is a legal principle that every person accused of any crime is considered innocent until proven guilty. Under the presumption of innocence, the legal burden of proof is thus on the prosecution, which must presen ...
by the defendant. Fulfilling the burden of proof effectively captures the benefit of assumption, passing the burden of proof off to another party.
In statistics
In inferential statistics
Statistical inference is the process of using data analysis to infer properties of an underlying distribution of probability.Upton, G., Cook, I. (2008) ''Oxford Dictionary of Statistics'', OUP. . Inferential statistical analysis infers propertie ...
, the null hypothesis is a general statement or default position that there is no relationship between two measured phenomena, or no association among groups. Rejecting or disproving the null hypothesis
A hypothesis (plural hypotheses) is a proposed explanation for a phenomenon. For a hypothesis to be a scientific hypothesis, the scientific method requires that one can test it. Scientists generally base scientific hypotheses on previous obse ...
—and thus concluding that there are grounds for believing that there ''is'' a relationship between two phenomena (e.g. that a potential treatment has a measurable effect)—is a central task in the modern practice of science; the field of statistics gives precise criteria for rejecting a null hypothesis.
The null hypothesis is generally assumed to be true until evidence indicates otherwise. In statistics, it is often denoted ''H''0 (read “H-nought”, "H-null", "H-oh", or "H-zero").
The concept of a null hypothesis is used differently in two approaches to statistical inference. In the significance testing approach of Ronald Fisher
Sir Ronald Aylmer Fisher (17 February 1890 – 29 July 1962) was a British polymath who was active as a mathematician, statistician, biologist, geneticist, and academic. For his work in statistics, he has been described as "a genius who ...
, a null hypothesis is rejected if the observed data are significantly unlikely to have occurred if the null hypothesis were true. In this case the null hypothesis is rejected and an alternative hypothesis is accepted in its place. If the data are consistent with the null hypothesis, then the null hypothesis is not rejected. In neither case is the null hypothesis or its alternative proven; the null hypothesis is tested with data and a decision is made based on how likely or unlikely the data are. This is analogous to the legal principle of presumption of innocence
The presumption of innocence is a legal principle that every person accused of any crime is considered innocent until proven guilty. Under the presumption of innocence, the legal burden of proof is thus on the prosecution, which must presen ...
, in which a suspect or defendant is assumed to be innocent (null is not rejected) until proven guilty (null is rejected) beyond a reasonable doubt (to a statistically significant degree).
In the hypothesis testing
A statistical hypothesis test is a method of statistical inference used to decide whether the data at hand sufficiently support a particular hypothesis.
Hypothesis testing allows us to make probabilistic statements about population parameters.
...
approach of Jerzy Neyman
Jerzy Neyman (April 16, 1894 – August 5, 1981; born Jerzy Spława-Neyman; ) was a Polish mathematician and statistician who spent the first part of his professional career at various institutions in Warsaw, Poland and then at University Colleg ...
and Egon Pearson, a null hypothesis is contrasted with an alternative hypothesis and the two hypotheses are distinguished on the basis of data, with certain error rates.
Proponents of each approach criticize the other approach. Nowadays, though, a hybrid approach is widely practiced and presented in textbooks. The hybrid is in turn criticized as incorrect and incoherent—for details, see Statistical hypothesis testing.
Statistical inference can be done without a null hypothesis, by specifying a statistical model corresponding to each candidate hypothesis and using model selection
Model selection is the task of selecting a statistical model from a set of candidate models, given data. In the simplest cases, a pre-existing set of data is considered. However, the task can also involve the design of experiments such that the ...
techniques to choose the most appropriate model.[.] (The most common selection techniques are based on either Akaike information criterion
The Akaike information criterion (AIC) is an estimator of prediction error and thereby relative quality of statistical models for a given set of data. Given a collection of models for the data, AIC estimates the quality of each model, relative to e ...
or Bayes factor
The Bayes factor is a ratio of two competing statistical models represented by their marginal likelihood, and is used to quantify the support for one model over the other. The models in questions can have a common set of parameters, such as a nul ...
.)
See also
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Burden Of Proof
Epistemology
Evidence
Doubt
Reasoning
Concepts in metaphilosophy