ABSTRACT
I believe that weight of evidence is the most important inferential method in science, the law, and even day-to-day decisions (Chapter 25). However, until recently, it has not been taken as seriously as it should by environmental assessors. In this chapter, you will learn the basics of the USEPA Risk Assessment Forum’s guidelines for weight of evidence (USEPA 2016e). They were developed by ecological assessors, but they were deliberately designed to be useful for human health assessments as well and were reviewed by human health assessors in the Risk Assessment Forum. For example, see an application of the method to derivation of human health benchmark values by read-across (Suter and Lizarraga 2022). With all due modesty, I believe that these guidelines are the best general weight-of-evidence approach available for environmental assessment.
