ABSTRACT
The word "evidence" has therefore gained both an exaggerated importance and a restricted interpretation. In the courts, impersonal data have for a long time been referred to as evidence. Fascinatingly, it is a simple oath on a religious text that transforms the dubious personal impressions of individuals into evidence in the court. Compassion by its very nature is more closely allied to personal, as opposed to the corporate or population-based, needs and it is uniquely placed to respond to the intangible and subjective. "Evidence", in quotation marks, will denote the caricature, either/or, digitalised, over-complicated, addictive, reductive version. The application of "evidence" and the routine utilisation of outcome measures implant a number of implied values and then, like a stage hypnotist, erase from memory all trace of their insertion. Evidence, in its broader sense, is something that shows or illuminates. It is to be distinguished from "evidence", that product and fuel of a fear-driven pursuit of the illusion of certainty.
