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How should scientific evidence – or rather, a scientific hypothesis – be treated by the judge (or juror) who deals with it? Without dwelling on how this type of evidence enters the trial, the paper will expand on the judicial evaluation of scien-tific evidence. The Author retains that the ‘reinforced reasoning’ approach (a decision method structured by necessary steps, made up of arguments concerning salient as-pects of the case under examination and which must be appreciated in order to de-cide) is also applicable in this matter., BioLaw Journal - Rivista di BioDiritto, N. 1S (2022): Special Issue 1/2022

Some philosophers have argued that evidence of underlying mechanisms does not provide evidence for the effectiveness of a medical intervention. One such argument appeals to the unreliability of mechanistic reasoning. However, mechanistic reasoning is not the only way that evidence of mechanisms might provide evidence of effectiveness. A more reliable type of reasoning may be distinguished by appealing to recent work on evidential pluralism in the epistemology of medicine. A case study from virology provides an example of this so‐called reinforced reasoning in medicine. It is argued that in this case study, the available evidence of underlying mechanisms did in fact play a role in providing evidence in favour of a medical intervention. This paper therefore adds a novel and recent case study to the literature in support of evidential pluralism in medicine.