Too Good to be True? Scientists Say It Can Be Mathematically Proved
Sound too good to be true? A cure for cancer? Ice cream that will never make you fat? Live forever? The sad truth is it probably is. And now it's been proven mathematically in research led by the University of Adelaide . Newswise.com reports that a team of researchers has found that overwhelming evidence without a dissenting opinion can in fact weaken the credibility of a case, or point to a failure of the system. One of the examples cited by the research team is an ancient Jewish law that said a suspect could not be convicted of a capital crime if all judges unanimously handed down a guilty verdict. “It might sound counterintuitive to say that a unanimous verdict could be wrong, but this ancient law indicated that the system may be in error if there was complete agreement among the judiciary,” says corresponding author Professor Derek Abbott , a probability expert from the University of Adelaide’s School of Electrical & Electronic Engineeri...