“It Depends What You Mean By Evidence”.

By Margaret Reichlin

As any chemical victim knows, the term ‘anecdotal evidence’ has changed its meaning drastically over the years. To the Greeks it meant ‘unpublished thing’. By the 17th century it had come to mean ‘secret history’, or ‘the unpublished information about the affairs or transactions of princes’. By the 18th century and until quite recently it meant an isolated description of a particular incident. So how, in recent times, and particularly in cases relating to chemicals, has ‘anecdotal’ come to mean ‘subjective, unreliable, untrustworthy, sketchy, undependable’? And not only how, but why?

Let us take some examples of ‘anecdotal evidence’. Pliny’s description of the eruption of Vesuvius on the 4th of August, 79 AD? Pepys’ description of the Great Fire of London, on 2nd September, 1666? Seamens’ descriptions of the Great Waves? Only in recent years, after Mount St Helens and Pinatubo, have vulcanologists accepted that Pliny’s description was an accurate recording of volcanic behaviour. Pepys was lucky in that others described the same event, and that it was a man-made disaster. Seamen had to wait until the Draupner Oil Rig experienced and recorded a Great Wave in the North Sea (26 metres in a sea averaging 12 metres) on 1st of January, 1995, setting off research that has shown that not only do Great Waves happen, but they are not uncommon and have clear behaviour patterns. What is most of history if not anecdotal evidence? Good journalism is anecdotal evidence. Anecdotal evidence is a basic part of police work and the justice system, every time a witness gives evidence in court.

So ‘anecdotal’ has changed its meaning, or its interpretation. What about ‘evidence’? That, too, is in a process of change that appears to be deliberate and speedy, and in ways that should be ringing alarm bells. Let us take some examples.

We are all familiar with ‘there is no evidence’ used to imply that the absence of evidence means evidence of absence, when it may merely mean that no-one has looked for evidence, or may not have liked the evidence that they found, so failed to record it. “Scientists are not the paragons of open-mindedness and humility that many of them would like others to believe”, quoted Michael Crichton in “Travels”. The alternative wording for this is usually “no recorded data”, or “No available data”, both more accurate though often read less accurately. Someone once pointed out that evidence is often ‘found data at the end of the trail’, rather than the beginning (as with lost objects, that is of course where one stops looking), but the trail often begins with ‘anecdotal evidence’ that arouses curiosity. In fact, this approach has been the basis of the sciences and most other forms of learning through most of history.

‘Established evidence’ is a relative newcomer, and one familiar to many phone mast battlers. Only ‘established evidence’ will be accepted in a protest or appeal. So what does it mean? ‘Established evidence’ is that approved by officialdom and industry (Government-supported Industry, and Industry-supported Government, and precisely the people you are fighting, all too often) before enquiry even starts. Any studies, however well approved elsewhere, if they have not arrived at the desired conclusion, will not be considered.

‘Evidence based’, usually used in relation to medicine so far, is also used in relation to science, and again the term is exclusive, and means approved by officialdom and industry, and may be accompanied by terms such as ‘cost effective’ and ‘benefit-risk’. In medicine its use in relation to pharmaceuticals is self evident, but just how ‘established’ is some of the evidence? How accurate, full, understood? Aspirin appeared long before the current jargon, and its success is still largely unexplained, but it was first used with gratitude and acceptance based on observation that it worked, in other words observed effect. Its ethnic predecessors have an even longer history and even less explanation. One effect of the use of ‘evidence based’ medicine is to justify the refusal to accept alternative medicine, on the grounds that it is not ‘evidence based’. But are different standards of evidence being applied here? Perhaps, even, should different standards of evidence be applied? (And should there be a clarification of which is ‘traditional’ medicine?)

If something works, is that evidence? Is it even the most important evidence? To most people osteopathy seems as common-sense as engineering. Homoeopathy works on animals, not much given to recognising placebo effects. Acupuncture makes perfect sense in the light of traditional Chinese medicine. Every time you let the dog out to rush to his favourite clump of grass you are witnessing herbalism at work.

If social problems are looked at in the light of politics, biology or religion they will have three different answers, depending on the starting point. This may apply even to three different religions. The same thing happens when medical problems are looked at from the point of view of toxicology, neurology, virology or psychiatry. So what is evidence? Is iatrogenic illness evidence? Or is the absence of iatrogenic illness? What weight does anecdotal (reported by the owner of the body) evidence carry?

And what effect on the ‘evidence’ may be created by the fact that there are 44,000+ psychologists and psychiatrists in Britain today, to some 30,000 GPs, to some 1,100 toxicologists (including those working in industry, academia, and abroad, as well as students), and 350 consultant neurologists?

The problem with ‘anecdotal evidence’ we are told, is that it is subjective. Subjective is usually applied to the artist, objective to the scientists. One implies imagination, one reality, all too often, whereas the difference may well be personal experience rather than theory? Again, let us look at the same thing from different angles.

You have driven a car for five years, so you know it well. You take it to a good mechanic and say that it has started pulling to the right and has developed a whine when going uphill. He will accept that you are familiar with your car, and that it is his job to find out why it is doing these things. You have lived in a house for forty years, and call in a builder to find out why all the doors are suddenly sticking on the west side, the stairs have developed a loud squeak, and the west wall feels damp on the second floor. He will assume that you know your house and that it is his job to find out why these things are happening, and to put them right.

You have lived in your own body for years, you find that every summer you are sneezing and wheezing, and it is taken for granted by doctors that you have hay fever. You find every year that when the adjoining farmer sprays his fields, or the councils spray the verges, you have sore eyes, nose, throat, your energy vanishes and your vision is out of gear, and what happens? That will depend largely on who you see, what their training has been, who provided it, but it will almost certainly NOT depend on the accuracy or clarity of your own observation and experience. Your description of what is happening to your own body is ‘anecdotal evidence’. What the risk assessment and data sheet say will be ‘evidence’. (Until, of course, everything from which you are suffering is listed on the data sheet. Then it becomes ‘perceived risk’!).

If officialdom has appropriated the right to decide what is evidence, what use are they making of it? Is it seen as a responsibility or a privilege?

An HSE (Health and Safety) inspector whose consistent response to the physical evidence (an easily identifiable smell of Pentachlorophenol, expert opinion (HSE approved), professional knowledge British Wood Preserving and Damp Proofing Association, and another inspector in the same office telling people to beware of the disputed incident happening to them, is “I cannot believe …”. … Is this an objective or subjective verdict? Evidence based? If the Pesticide Incident Appraisal Panel change the names of chemicals in an incident, with a resulting “TBTO… Poisonings …0”, in other words, “there is no evidence” that Tributyl Tin Oxide is harmful to humans, a verdict that still stands, officially, on this much more widely used chemical, ten years later. Is this subjective or objective? Slovenly or deceptive? Is it even legal? Is it legal only because it is official? Responsibility or privilege? Use or abuse?

‘Evidence’, says my dictionary, means ‘indication, sign, facts, available as proof. Information given personally, or drawn from document, etc. and tending to prove fact. Testimony admissible in court’. In other words, evidence is what contributes to the end product, proof. Evidence is subject to assessment, comparison, testing, checking. It may be ongoing, needing reassessment. Its sources may be varied. It may be obvious, it may be subtle. It may support existing theory, or demolish it. It may represent profit or loss, life or death, and will test us, as people. It is not something to be treated lightly, or dishonestly, or selfishly.

So what is happening to it today? Officialdom is deciding not what evidence PROVES, but what IS evidence, established evidence, acceptable evidence, evidence based, in advance of investigation. In a justice system, this is corruption of the most serious nature. What is it in science or politics? It is control by language, something familiar to every totalitarian government or authoritarian religion. “Authoritarian governments don’t like dictionaries. They live by lies and bamboozling abstracts and can’t afford to have words accurately described” said Kenneth Clark in “Civilisation”.

So when officialdom selects and owns the evidence, where does that leave us? Unprotected, in both law and in health and safety. It leaves us as non-persons. There is no word in the English language for the lack of the right to offer evidence, because so far we have not needed one. Do we need it now?

It is a basic right that we are losing. How can we recover it?

May 2003