Evidence ethics

Evidence ethics are the ethical standards surrounding the creation and use of debate evidence. Debaters who violate these standards may be sanctioned, up to and including disqualification from tournaments. This generally takes place through an official adjudication process.

Evidence ethics may also include policies specific to research rings and individual clubs, such as a requirement not to share briefs from a research ring with non-members, or not to submit sourcebook evidence as if it was original research.

General tenets
While there is some disagreement about what constitutes an ethics violation, the following practices are generally considered to be unethical:


 * Falsification of evidence, i.e. quoting material from authors and sources that do not actually exist.


 * Changing words in a quote, including reading a quote differently than it is written on the page.


 * Abusing underlining so as to change the meaning of the quote, for example by not reading the word "not".


 * Otherwise misrepresenting the intent of the author, for example by taking a quote out of context, so the author appears to come to a different conclusion that he/she actually does.


 * Misrepresenting the date, qualifications, or nature of a particular source.

Controversies
Some practices are considered ethics violations by some people, but not others. Such practices include:

Citations: Some consider the use of evidence that is unverifiable (such as evidence missing a complete citation) to be an ethics violation. Others consider it a practical issue - lack of a citation may be a reason to attack evidence in-round, but it is not necessarily an ethics issue. The NCFCA officially takes the former position; Stoa unofficially takes the latter.

Opinions also differ about what constitutes a complete citation. Most notably, some consider it unethical to omit article titles from sources. Stoa guidelines also recommend including an access date for internet sources, but it is not generally considered an ethics violation to omit it.

Underlining: The practice of underlining cards, while generally accepted, has generated some controversy. A small number of people believe that it is unethical to verbally combine non-continuous portions of a quote into one block. Still others believe that any underlining at all is unethical. Proponents generally respond that a similar practice, the use of ellipses to string together discontinuous quotes, is frequently used in law journals and other academic publications. They argue that if a debater uses underlining to misrepresent the author's intent, the problem is with the debater, not the underlining; 99% of the time, underlining is a perfectly legitimate tool.

NCFCA evidence standards
The NCFCA requires that all debaters adhere to an official evidence ethics standard. As of 2012, the operative part of the standard read:


 * "Availability: Since evidence must be verifiable, evidence presented in a round should be physically present in the debate room and made available for examination by the judge or the other team, if requested. If evidence presented verbally includes strikeouts, then the complete form of that evidence should also be physically available for examination, if requested.


 * Standard: Fabricated or distorted evidence is prohibited. Fabricating evidence is asserting as fact information that cannot be found in a published source. It is manufacturing articles, quotes or dates. Distorting evidence is misrepresenting evidence in a way that alters the author’s meaning. This would include but is not limited to:


 * 1. Using only a portion of the entire quote so that it is no longer consistent with the author’s position throughout the entire article.


 * 2. Changing words within the quote. This would include changing words like “might” to “will,” or “could” to “is.” This can dramatically alter the author’s intention.


 * 3. Summarizing a quote to save time, but presenting it as a direct quote from the author.


 * Proper Citation: There are many acceptable methods of citation. Since evidence may be questioned, the citation method should, at minimum, be sufficient to allow for verification via public means."

Complaints have been raised about the wording of several portions of the NCFCA evidence standards. In particular, the wording of the Availability section could be interpreted to mean that debaters must provide a complete printed copy of every article they quote from - which is neither common practice, nor generally considered necessary. Concerns have also been raised about the ambiguity of the phrase "public means", which could be interpreted to rule out the use of subscription databases such as LexisNexis.

Stoa evidence standards
Stoa has no uniform set of "rules" regarding evidence ethics, but provides a standards document to help guide debaters and adjudicators. In general, issues regarding quality, availability, and verifiability are considered practical in-round concerns, rather than grounds for disqualification. Intentionally misrepresenting the intent of the author, however, may be considered grounds for disqualification.

Stoa's standards document is more detailed than the NCFCA's, but may be summarized as follows:


 * Standards for evidence


 * 1. Must be in the public domain (i.e. be reasonably accessible and verifiable.)


 * 2. Must be published in written form (which includes web sources and published transcripts.)


 * 3. Must not be paraphrased (the actual evidence must be read out loud; reasonable editing is allowed.)


 * 4. Must have a complete source citation (including author, title, publication, date, and page number; web pages should have URLs and access dates.)


 * Standards for editing


 * 1. Must preserve the intent of the author.


 * 2. Must preserve the original context of the quote (so one can verify that author's intent has been preserved.)


 * 3. Secondary sources are acceptable (but primary sources are preferred.)


 * 4. The speech should clearly communicate the quotation (what is and isn't part of the quotation should be clear; significant edits or omissions should be verbally noted.)