A few weeks back, a group of experienced genealogists gathered to dissect and discuss an NGSQ article. During discussion, the topic of Genealogical Proof Standard (GPS) arose when one participant asked about GPS. She was familiar with the “Preponderance of Evidence” principle (POE), but had not read anything on GPS. Another participant replied, “It’s the same thing, just a different label.” Others countered that there was a material difference between the two standards, but even these individuals varied on their explanation of the difference. It was not the first time that I encountered variable perspectives on GPS. This was just the latest.
Coincident to our discussion, I was reading various books and articles that describe GPS. Genealogy, as a discipline, is still in a transition period whereby it is moving away from a less reliable standard (POE) to one that better serves the nature of our research (GPS). As a result, it is rare to read anything that does not discuss both standards.
If you are somewhat a novice to genealogy, my advice is to focus upon how GPS is explained. Ignore any reference to POE. POE is not necessary for you to try to learn at this point. Trying to learn both in unison and to tease apart the differences, is likely to cause confusion and, perhaps, unnecessary anxiety. Understanding POE is not necessary for you to understand how to apply GPS to you present-day research.
However, if you “cut your genealogical teeth” on POE, then you have some reorienting of your mindset and re-engineering your analysis process. But this involves little more than changing how you examine or analyze your data—which, frankly, is sometimes easier said than done. The difference, simply stated, is that GPS seeks to eliminate or to minimize the potential for error inherent with POE. This shift involved adopting new terminology to distinguish the old way of doing things and to avoid confusion with the legal interpretation of POE. Thus, the label Genealogical Proof Standard was created.
That’s as much as I want to say about POE. Here, I want to discuss my general understanding of GPS and what has been written about it. I want to describe that understanding in terms of my background in research design and epistemology (how we know whatever it is that we know).
Some authors have written about GPS calling it a methodology. But their description is wrong. A methodology provides specific steps to reproduce an experiment or study. A simple analogy would be getting to work from home. There are specific steps that you follow daily to go from home to work (or other places). For some, it would might look like:
- Get in car.
- Start engine.
- Pull out of driveway,
- Turn left onto street.
- …
- Arrive at work.
The nature of the sources that we use in genealogical research don’t allow the clear-cut step-wise traits of a methodology. GPS is more like a check list of features. As you look at your research, you take this check list (GPS) and answer the question: Does my research have this quality (feature) and, if so, to what degree does it have this quality? Let me explain by analogy: Suppose you want to purchase a new car. You develop a check list of features to help you decide which car to purchase.
- Does it get good gas mileage?
- How expensive is it to maintain?
- What is its resale history?
- …
With each of these questions, you look for an optimal combination of those qualities. In a perfect world you want the best gas mileage, the least maintenance costs, and the highest resale value. You want the most for the lowest price. But let’s return to earth. The car that meets all these standards probably does not exist. Instead you seek an optimal combination of these qualities. Otherwise, you will never purchase a car.
In many ways this is true of our research. We seek the optimal combination of the features of quality research. If we waited until all the questions were answered, we would never publish anything of our findings. I will try to explore GPS in more detail over the next few postings.
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It’s certainly not necessary to understand POE, but understanding both it, and the highest standard of evidence, “beyond reasonable doubt,” makes it far easier to understand what “clear and convincing” is all about, the criteria of evidence required in the GPS.
And, speaking of the wording in GPS, I dislike intensely the word “proof,” it has no place in genealogy. It implies a permanence of conclusion that should never be part of what we do.
That all being said, I firmly support everything about the GPS, except it’s title.
Hi, Bill,
I agree that the phrase can lead to faulty logic, thus misplaced confidence in one’s conclusions. I would also argue that the term “standard’ can be a problem, semantically speaking. A standard is a measurement, objectively or operationally defined. “Clear and convincing” is still too vague. The linguist within me understands this ambiguity is the nature of language and meaning.
Like the preverbial everyman, we can say, “I may not know what art is, but I know it when I see it.” What is convincing to one person may not be convincing to another. There is nothing objectively measureable about “convincing.”
As a project for a graduate course, I researched the history of the rise of quantitative methods in American psychology. If you look at almost every research university in our country, examine the course requirements for a degree in psychology, you find that statistics and statistical modeling is a core degree requirement. I wanted to understand why American psychology was substantially different from European countries. The gist of my findings was that prior to the introduction of statistics, psychological experiments were introspections. Then others in the hard sciences, responded: How can you measure a person’s thoughts?
I see a number of parallels with psychology’s efforts to be accepted as a “scientific” discipline and what genealogy is currently experiencing in its effort to be accepted as legitimate research.
I predict that there will be new terms and new concepts that will evolve for genealogy for which genealogists everywhere will debate in a “war of words.”
I refer to Giambattista Vico (17th century historian) who gave us the sense of “invention” with respect to how we explain our world with words. For Vico:
For now, as imperfect as the language is to accurately describe the concept of what we do and how we do it, we will slog through the process of research that is a reply to the questions posited by GPS. It is the process that has my attention. It is the process that I wish to explore with my readers.