User:Ed Poor/Factual dispute

A factual dispute may arise when two or more parties disagree about the truth of a matter.

Legal disputes

Main article: Question of fact

In law, when a dispute over an event such as a crime occurs, a court will seek witnesses to give testimony. Often it is a question of one witness's word against another, and a judge or jury will have to decide which is more credible. One such basis for judgment is whether a party to dispute has an interest in the case. One of the earliest cases comes from the Jewish apocrapha, in which a man who wanted to seduce a woman brought charges of theft against her to punish her for refusing his advances. When this motive of his was exposed, his testimony was discarded as incredible.

See also:

• Standard of proof

Religious disputes

In religion, when a dispute over doctrine or dogma arises, it generally cannot be settled because there is no basis other than ecclesiastical authority to determine what is true. Religious authorities typically have labelled dissenters as heretics. Many splits have arisen over these disputes, resulting in sects and denominations; and different religions disagree on several fundamental ideas. Moreover, the non-religious typically regard many religious ideas as non-factual.

Scientific disputes

In science, disputes are handled differently from in religion and law. Science aims to discover and publish principles which every person can agree are true. This is a relatively new idea in history, and only started to become popular in the last four centuries (see Galileo). Whereas in religion, disputes over "what is true" are settled by authority or simply result in creation of a splinter group, modern scientists refuse to give up so easily. They seek to settle the matter in a way everyone (even non-scientists) can easily understand and agree upon. And unlike in law, science refuses to take one person's word against another. Rather, a scientific idea is regarded as "a fact" only if the result has been demonstrated by a reputable scientist and, in principle, any researcher who investigates it could replicate the predicted results. Failure to reproduce results can bring a scientific idea into disrepute, although the process of testing and confirmation can sometimes drag on for decades (see germ theory of disease).