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Types of evidence
Direct evidenceof an occurrence is perceived by a witness using their senses.For example: a witness who testifies that he saw the defendant shoot the victim.
Indirect evidenceestablishes immediately collateral facts from which the main fact may be inferred e.g. Caltech astronomers Mike Brown and Konstantin Batygin have accumulated indirect evidence for an object that’s more than twice the diameter of Earth, but 10 times as far from the sun as Pluto.
Circumstantial evidenceconsists of a fact or set of facts which, if proven, will support the creation of an inference that the matter asserted is true e.g. a fingerprint at the scene of a crime.
In the crime fiction novel Presumed Dead, evidence of these types is used to reconstruct the crime.
Crime reconstruction
A crime can be analysed by developing a theory as a chain of causative hypotheses, the strength of each link depending upon the rigour of the testing. The strength of the chain is no more than its weakest link. Links are not necessarily strengthened by evidence, which may direct, indirect or circumstantial. Hypotheses can explain evidence but must be able to be falsified and able to make predictions of something yet unobserved.
In the crime fiction novel Presumed Dead, the crime is systematically reconstructed:
Hypothesising a crime
Karl Popper (1902-1994) is widely regarded as one of the greatest philosophers of science.
A hypothesis is a proposed explanation for a phenomenon. For a hypothesis to be a scientific hypothesis, the scientific method requires that one can test it by refuting it. It is not possible to ‘prove’ an hypothesis or show that an hypothesis is ‘true’, only falsify it. The null hypothesis is that some estimate is due to chance vs the alternative hypothesis that there is some statistically significant effect.If this evidence exists, we can reject the null hypothesis and accept the alternative hypothesis.
In the crime fiction novel Presumed Dead, the investigator reconstructs the crime with a chain of hypotheses. https://wp.me/P1z4yo-n
Get over it?
PTSD is characterised by failure to recover after experiencing or witnessing a terrifying event. The condition may last months or years, with triggers that can bring back memories of the trauma accompanied by intense emotional and physical reactions.
In the novel ‘PRESUMED DEAD’ a key witness could be affected by PTSD. https://wp.me/P1z4yo-n
