Hearsay

Hearsay is an out-of-court statement, by someone other than the witness testifying, admitted to prove the truth of what was asserted in the statement. Literally it comes from "hear it said," which is inherently unreliable as to the truth what was supposedly said. Gossip is a type of hearsay. The concept is best thought of as codifying the unreliability of secondary or tertiary knowledge.

Explained another way, hearsay is evidence presented by a witness who did not see or hear the incident in question but heard about it from someone else.

Hearsay is typically excluded from legal proceedings due to its lack of reliability for reasons including the following:

• the speaker of the hearsay may have been uninformed
• the speaker of the hearsay may have been lying, without providing the court an attempt to check against the alleged declarant

There are limited exceptions that do allow the admission of hearsay as evidence when special circumstances make the hearsay more reliable than usual. These exceptions include, for example:

• certain prior statements by a witness (F.R.Evid. 801(d)(1) - not considered to be hearsay at all)
• admissions against a party's own interest (in the federal rules, F.R.Evid. 801(d)(2) this is not considered hearsay at all)
• dying words
• things said in the midst of an occurance - the res gestae

Hearsay only refers to statements offered to prove the truth of the matter asserted. It does not apply or limit use of testimony about hearing a statement, if not offered to prove the truth of the matter asserted. For example, Bob hearing someone tell him that Richard had stolen his car is not evidence that Richard stole Bob's car, but it can be evidence that Bob believed his car had been stolen by Richard (and was therefore angry with Richard). This exception is generally called the "State of Mind" rule.

Wikipedia and the hearsay society

The online encyclopedia Wikipedia is fundamentally based on hearsay. Assertions made in Wikipedia articles are required to be supported by "references"; this superficially gives an impression of rigor, but in practice it leads to a parrotting of the opinions of others, ie hearsay, and a negation of the individual's ability to use his intelligence to make connections and insights based on logic. Wikipedia typically dismisses logical inferences as "original research", and they are swiftly deleted, regardless of their insight or obvious truth.

Thanks to the growth and popularity of Wikipedia, this attitude has spread elsewhere, both in online communities and wider society, to the point where many are reluctant to express any view unless others have said it first. The result is a hearsay society, where popularly-espoused "facts" are repeated and circulated endlessly, while truths and new insights are shut out, ignored or actively censored.