BoP in philosophy is more about arguing over who has it as a way of resolving conflicting positions.
Which conflicting positions have been resolved in philosophy? Did the BoP decide between Bentham's consequentialism and Kant's deontology?
The impression I get of philosophers, is that they continue to leave these questions open. So there is no resolution.
Moreover, the BoP is useless until everyone agrees who has the burden of proof, which means everyone is already moving past the conflict onto agreement.
For example, if you make an extraordinary claim you require extraordinary evidence. This is a neat way of defaulting to a gentle dismissal of spooky conclusions until there's reason to believe them. This works for religious claims, conspiracy claims, supernatural claims, and especially scientific claims.
But if the other person says "it's not extraordinary", then you have the BoP to prove that the claim is extraordinary. Until your opponent agrees that his claim is extraordinary, there's no need for extraordinary evidence.
Some of these claims might be correct, but until there's evidence for them then for most intents and purposes it's better to assume them wrong. This shifts the burden of proof onto the claim-maker. "Proof: is somewhat of a misnomer here, it's probably better to say "burden of evidence".
The "burden" here doesn't prove anything, because it relies upon the agreement of the other person, to agree that the burden is on him, and/or that the claim is extraordinary, and to also agree that his evidence is not extraordinary.
The BoP is a device of rhetoric that would justify why each person is entitled to not change their views until they are given evidence that would be acceptable to them.
That would be perfectly acceptable to me, except that's not how it is used at all.
If the other person accepts that the evidence is valid proof, then they've changed their position. The BoP is totally unnecessary.
If the other person says that the evidence is not valid proof, then they don't think there's valid evidence to change their position.The BoP is totally unnecessary.
The BoP is only useful when the other person says that the evidence is not valid proof, and thus they don't need to agree with you, and you say that the BoP is still on them, so they have to prove you are wrong, or must accept your arguments, even though they still think that your arguments are not sufficient evidence.
It thus tends to be used to persuade people to accept conclusions that they believe are not supported by the evidence.
Agree authority isn't equal.
What do you call a doctor who graduated bottom of their class?
What do you call Dr. Josef Mengele?
Titles are often meaningless.
I learned that when I was in university. The resident expert in statistics was called "Mr", not "Dr" or "Prof", and that was what was on his door, because he didn't have a doctorate.
But he was employed as a senior lecturer at the university, because he was still far, far better at statistics than all of the rest of the faculty who were all doctors and professors.
Likewise, you'd rather take the word of an EMT than someone who graduated from medical school 40 years ago and never practised medicine since then.
So just because someone isn't called "Dr", doesn't mean he knows nearly as much as someone who isn't.
Generally I don't rely on individual experts, rather, I'll copy-paste the conclusion from the most recent metastudy I can find.
I like to read about new discoveries more than old ones, because I already have a lot of knowledge about older discoveries, but not nearly as much knowledge about new ones.
But when evaluating what is true, I prefer to look at ALL the data.
Some of the most reliable information that we have, comes from hundreds of years ago, and some, thousands of years ago.
Some of the more recent studies have not had the time to be properly reviewed yet. Some of it is really poor quality, and is so bad that you wonder how it was every allowed to be published in the first place.
The things that we still believe from thousands of years ago, has had thousands of years to be peer-reviewed.
So in science, the older something is that has not been rejected yet, the stronger the proofs that are behind it.
That's evolution as applied to science.