Coaching practices for Evidence Quality Check

Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For Evidence Quality Check, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.

Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?

• A flimsy study that confirms what I want I’ll wave straight through, but a solid one that contradicts me I’ll pick apart for hours
• I’m leaning hard on the evidence that lines up with what I want to be true and brushing off the rest
• I start "researching" a question but I notice I’m really just typing in searches that hand me the answer I already wanted
• Someone stated something with total confidence and I just nodded and built on it
• My mind keeps stacking up every reason I’m right that this went badly, and I can’t seem to see anything that points the other way

Practices that may help

1. Apply the same evidence standard regardless of whether you like the conclusion
   Grade the evidence before you know which conclusion it supports.
   Motivated Reasoning
2. Evaluate evidence by its likelihood ratio, not by how it makes you feel
   Ask how much more likely this evidence would be if you’re right versus if you’re wrong.
   Bayesian Thinking: How to Update Beliefs Rationally
3. Structure the analysis before searching for evidence
   Define what you’re looking for and what would count as evidence before starting your search.
   Confirmation Bias: Seeing What You Expect to See
4. Probe for evidence behind claims
   Ask "what evidence supports that?" before accepting any factual or evaluative claim.
   Socratic Questioning
5. Check the Facts, Made Practical
   "Check the facts" is a DBT emotion regulation skill for testing whether an emotion is justified by the actual situation or whether it is firing based on an interpretation — a story the mind has added. The underlying mechanism (examining the evidence for a belief) is the same as cognitive restructuring in CBT, which has strong randomized-trial support for anxiety and depression. DBT packages it specifically as a regulation tool, to be used when the emotion may not fit the facts.
6. Examine the evidence for and against
   Systematically list what supports your interpretation and what doesn’t — like a fair-minded lawyer, not a prosecutor.
   Check the Facts, Made Practical
7. State your prior probability before seeing the evidence
   Before looking at any data, commit to a numerical estimate of how likely something is.
   Bayesian Thinking: How to Update Beliefs Rationally
8. Identify which features are actually diagnostic
   Separate features that genuinely differentiate categories from ones that just complete the picture.
   The Representativeness Heuristic — Judging by Resemblance
9. Specify what would falsify your belief before you look at evidence
   Write down what evidence would prove you wrong before you go looking.
   Falsification Thinking
10. Build branches that are MECE at every level
    Ensure each set of branches is mutually exclusive (no overlap) and collectively exhaustive (nothing important missing).
    Issue Tree Analysis

Describe your situation in your own words to search the complete practice library.