Granted a good idea should be proven, but who does the proving? In other words, who has the Burden of Proof. Putting the burden on the wrong person is a guaranteed way to skew results to a deductive failure. Guilty until proven innocent may be a great way to find someone guilty. It’s also going make a lot of innocent people go to jail (or worse).
By now you have probably caught on that “common mistakes” can also be turned into “common cons”. A Misplaced Burden of proof is one of the best cons around. If you are arguing with the car salesman that you don’t want the car, you’re probably about to buy a car. So, this is something we want to watch for.
How the burden of proof is decided can be a debate? But, I can start us off with some general rules of thumb:
Proof should depend on where being wrong carries the greatest risk or cost.
We decided that it should be “innocent until proven guilty” because a convicted innocent means an additional person is harmed while the guilty still go free.
The one asking for something should have the burden.
There are few successful businesses expecting their customers to sell to them.
New theories need to be proven over established owns.
There are no science papers entitled “How no one proved me wrong”.
The unlikely has a burden over the likely
No matter how sure you are of seeing Big Foot, everyone else will ask for proof.
And I’m sure there are more. Knowing where the burden lies is a bit of an art. Rules will even contradict. OK, my doctor testing for ebola is too much. But testing for bird flu may not be, especially if there was a recent outbreak. Bird flu is still unlikely, but the risk may be too high to ignore.
The shifting the burden is so tempting that we can find ourselves wrestling with it constantly. If you ever had a friend ask “why not?” when you refused a favor, you know what I mean. And, just try watching cable news one day looking for misplaced burdens of proof.
Since the burden of proof is subjective, we often shift it without realizing. “I can’t believe my friend would not do that favor, and his reason was so stupid.” The difference between having an opinion versus being opinionated is that the opinionated always believe others have the burden of proof.
What makes a misplaced burden of proof so insidious is that it is a way to make others take all the risk. It may lead to a lot of mistakes but others suffer the consequences. In fact, if the burden of proof is being misplaced someone is being conned (even if it just you conning yourself).
A misplaced burden of proof combined with incorrect standards of evidence is deadly. If you ever find yourself will all the burden of proof and the other side makes up their own rules, you’re going to lose that debate. This is how the stupid win arguments, so you better hope the debate is unimportant.
A misplaced burden of proof can be it’s worse when one side has more power over the other. Has a bank ever done a credit check for you? You always have the burden of proof with your boss, even when logic would otherwise dictate. But only in the short term. Banks with bad credit will eventually close, and bosses get fired when they ignore the good advice of their employees.
And so, part of a relationship is how burdens of proof are decided. My boss may always demand proof that I should be employed, but bosses often forget to prove we should work for them.
