The phrase "no evidence" is utterly meaningless. It can mean one of two things:

  1. This thing is super plausible, and honestly very likely true, but we haven’t checked yet, so we can’t be sure.

  2. We have hard-and-fast evidence that this is false, stop repeating this easily debunked lie.


There were times during the pandemic where there was "no evidence" of human to human transmission. And "no evidence" of asymptomatic transmission, and "no evidence" that Delta was worse than wild-type.

If you see a headline that says "no evidence", you should probably give it "no credibility." Most "no evidence" headlines are "no evidence of something that's probably true, but we're investigating it now."

  • CoconutOctopus [it/its]
    ·
    3 years ago

    That may be true, but Scott Alexander Siskin saying something is usually evidence against that thing.