Issuepedia:Arguing/challenge/responsibility

Rule: When an assertion is challenged, responsibility for its defense rests with the person who made the assertion.

Formalized

If person A makes an assertion X and person B challenges it, it is then A's responsibility to produce evidence defending X, not B's responsibility to produce evidence against it.

Corollary

You don't need to have your counterevidence together in order to challenge an assertion.

Exception

Negative assertions (A asserts "there's no such thing as...") are an exception to this rule, since you can't prove a negative. It is B's responsibility to produce at least one counter-example.

Related

• If an assertion is not challenged, then it is accepted as true.
• If a challenged assertion remains undefended, then it is assumed to be false.

Justification

Since the reasons for A's belief in X are unknown:

• If A is honest, any attempt at refuting X might well be based on false assumptions and therefore a straw man.
• If A is dishonest, A could claim that any attempt to refute X was a straw man by inventing an arbitrary and different set of reasons for belief in X. While these reasons would almost certainly be easily refutable as well, it A could nonetheless waste a lot of time if the extra step of making an attempt at refutation were part of the required process.