What is the Index of Evidence? 

A reverse-engineered book.

An print device repurposed for the digital age.

An alphabetical list of terms.

An speculative enquiry into evidence.

An orientation guide to the present.

What are the aims of the project? 

To explore how established notions of fact and evidence are changing in the so-called post-truth era, when it seems we have more information at our fingertips than ever before, but also more misinformation, disinformation, lies and fakery. On the Internet, of course, hierarchies of knowledge are being levelled and top-down expertise is increasingly challenged. This erosion of trust in medical authority is leading to a crisis of evidence in the public sphere. What is its value when every proof can be disputed and countered? In medical disciplines, too, there are opposing views about what counts as evidence, and even what it looks like. Debates have emerged about how raw data is put to use, about the role of narrative, and how scientific expertise relates to that of patient experience.

This project pieces together a picture of what is happening to evidence across a range of cultural contexts, from online populism and social media controversy to institutional and scientific debate. It explores what forms evidence now takes, the terminology and concepts that surround it, and the ways it is mobilised and circulated. The index of evidence is a tool for orienting ourselves in confusing times. It explores our predicament from fresh angles, asking what new understanding might be gained from recent upheavals, and what routes forward can be plotted.

Why an index? 

This project appropriates the index creatively as a genre of writing; one that presents possibilities that a conventional scholarly book or article cannot. The term index itself derives from the Latin verb ‘to indicate.’ It means a sign or measure of something, and in books it’s a device that points towards a particular page, allowing you to find your way around quickly and easily. Traditionally, the index oriented readers in a world of printed fact, but this one is different. It explores how we might find our way through the shifting, uncertain terrain of the digital era, in which facts are increasingly complex things.

While a conventional index is the last word to a book, compiled only after the text has been written, this one is only the starting point. The Index of Evidence is an online project that begins with a list of terms that resonate in the contemporary moment. These are terms which recur around questions of evidence in science, medicine and academic debate, but also in popular culture and on social media. Cumulatively, they suggest the ways knowledge is being transformed. But at present, they are entries that point nowhere: it’s an index to a book about evidence, but one that has yet to be written.

The Index of Evidence invites you to imagine the contents of this phantom book. Its  entries are cues for contributions. It’s a way of producing a text that is collectively written, dispersed, fragmented and on-going, incorporating diverse voices and viewpoints and ways of writing. Its entries can be scholarly, of course, but they can also take other forms. They can be brief thoughts, anecdotes, images, diagrams, sound and video. These parts don’t add up to a whole, but instead develop into an evolving, unfinished picture of our new situation.  

How do you use it?  

The index is an interactive tool. Entries in bold text are links that will take you somewhere, but not necessarily where you expected. From there, you can follow  other, sideways links to explore a network of other, related terms and their meanings.

Just as in a conventional index, there are page numbers. You might speculate about how the pages would fit together into a notional book, but unlike a print book it can never be read sequentially.   

How can I get involved?

The Index of Evidence invites you contribute. We want short responses that fill in the blanks, giving these index entries a destination. You can respond to your chosen term in any way you like. You might reflect on the contexts in which it is used and the meanings it carries. Or else you can respond to it in a more unorthodox way, taking the reader on an unexpected journey through the links and connections that term produces. You can include diagrams, illustrations, links to existing webpages, to evidence of various kinds, and of different degrees of reliability. You might even want to submit a new entry to the list of terms in the index. We seek contributions from a variety of perspectives, not just from specialists and academics in disparate disciplines, but also from various publics and interested parties. Gradually, these will accumulate into a collectively-written body of text. A book will take shape around the index, but one that is virtual, open-ended and necessarily unfinished.