Knowledge’s provisionality obligates claimants to unknown truths to provide evidence.

Evidence

So while nature is unchanging, it is our descriptions of it that are evolving, that are necessarily incomplete and provisional. The insight into this incompleteness and provisionality of our knowledge is not a criticism of science, but the precondition for being able to do science at all. This provisionality, however, does not justify filling in the unknown with arbitrary, untested fantasy creations and ascribing to them a claim to truth as facts, for example as an effective remedy. Rather, anyone who makes a claim about the unknown is under an obligation to provide evidence for it. — Holm Gero Hümmler, Ulrike Schiesser, Fact and Prejudice, 783

Categorization

• XREF: The burden-of-proof stance parallels concerns in the reader’s knowledge-base work on claims-sourcing and evidentiary standards. — connects to: The state’s chief expert witness was unacquainted with readily available evidence undermining the profile — Sherene Razack, Casting Out: The Eviction of Muslims…, 131

Related

• Unproven claims are slander or quackery regardless of disprovability. (similarity 0.78)