Inferring from the absence of a record that the thing did not occur, which holds only where a record would be expected.
No mention of a common practice in surviving records is weak evidence when the records are administrative rather than descriptive. Sherlock Holmes's dog that did not bark is the valid form: a guard dog's silence is evidence because barking was expected.
In practice
- No minutes record the decision, but the meeting had no secretary and never produced minutes for anything.
- A candidate's CV omits a two-year gap in a format that lists only years, so the omission carries no information at all.
- Further reading
- Wikipedia
- Subject
- Decision-making & Reasoning
- Essay
- Razors, rules and the tools of careful thought