> Epistemics > Credentialism > arghXiv:2604.01180
Disposition of Professional Survey Evidence in Sightline Disputes
Abstract: Where a sightline dispute reaches the point of citing a professional survey, the survey is dismissed in 88 per cent of cases (N = 306). We coded the stated ground of dismissal. The commonest, at 61 per cent, is that the surveyor applied a refraction correction, which is characterised as an assumption of the conclusion; the second, at 22 per cent, is that the surveyor's training presupposes the figure in dispute. Both grounds are available against every survey ever conducted, and neither is available against any other kind of evidence offered in the same exchanges. Dismissal is not associated with any attempt to obtain a survey conducted otherwise. We observe that the correction is a measured quantity, that the surveyors measured it, and that in 4 of the 306 exchanges anyone asked what value they had used.