Preponderance of Evidence Preponderance of Evidence by Felix G. Game Anyone who is serious about genealogy knows that every stitch of information, to be considered dependable, must be proven from original sources. To prove your parents should be easy, although it may take a bit of running around to find a copy of your birth certificate or similar document which shows your name and your parents' names. That is proof, because all names to be linked appear on the same document. No, it does not. There is still the shadow of transcription error.
Human intervention opens the door for errors.
Those of us who tend to be incorrigibly suspicious will go even further and worry about the original entry in those registers because they were also open to human error. Some of us who work extensively with primary sources have come across entries that were obviously in error. There are times when no documents are available, and there are times when there are more of them available than we can digest. It can happen that documents provide choices we do not welcome and do not know how to make. Thorough, logical and systematic examination is required to sort these out.