The Finding: Likelihood, Confidence, Falsifier

Two numbers, never one. Likelihood is how probable the judgment is. Confidence is how good the sourcing and reasoning underneath it are.

You can be highly confident that something is unlikely; you can hold a low-confidence view that something is very likely. Write them as one word and the reader cannot tell which kind of doubt you have.

Use a fixed lexicon for likelihood so that the words carry the same meaning for writer and reader. Almost no chance is 1 to 5 percent; very unlikely, 5 to 20; unlikely, 20 to 45; roughly even, 45 to 55; likely, 55 to 80; very likely, 80 to 95; almost certain, 95 to 99.

Note what is missing at both ends. Certainty is not on the scale.

Then the falsifier: the specific observation that would overturn your conclusion. If you cannot name one, you have not written a finding; you have written a position.

Naming it is also the cheapest protection you have against your own case. It tells a hostile reader exactly where to push, and it is better that you find the weakness first.

Finish with what you did not establish, stated plainly. An unmarked gap will be read as a claim. And record dissent: if someone on the case disagreed, the disagreement belongs in the document, not in the corridor.