"Why I am no longer a skeptic"

Are we still talking about factors that make evidence more or less reliable?

You brought up people being convicted based on eyewitness evidence. That is a legal example.  Judges are very familiar with how unreliable such evidence can be and write about it all the time, warn juries about it, etc.  The fact that people get convicted does not change the concerns over such evidence. Not to mention the number of people falsely convicted.  

Do you disagree with this?

This doesn't make Linda's blanket dismissal any less invalid. She has spoken in this thread in largely black and white terms, which is inappropriate. I think what jkmac is getting at is that just because some research doesn't achieve the "scientific" evidentiary standard Linda has referenced, does not mean it's able to be brushed to the side and ignored.

The predominant issue here, as has always been, is that because of the nature of the topic, it is extremely difficult, and in some cases impossible, to get anything other than subjective testimony. For some, that may forever bar it from consideration as legitimate evidence. I would suggest that that is naive and an incorrect application of an evidentiary standard that is lacking appreciation for the nature of the thing being dealt with. For the Stevenson studies, there can be no "objectivity" in the sense that Linda has referenced. It's all going to come from some person - and given that the vast, and I mean vast, majority of cases are very young children, it's never really going to satisfy the standard that Linda has set. If she or others want to ignore the evidence on those grounds, so be it. But it's blatantly unreasonable to suggest that it isn't "evidence" if it doesn't conform to that specific standard. You can always raise the bar; that doesn't make the bar raising reasonable.

As I'm sure you're familiar with, given your background, context and circumstances always matter in determining what is reasonable. I would think that it's obvious, or ought to be, that the nature of the topic being investigated requires an understanding that purely empirical objectivity, which is always the goal if possible, may be outside the realm of reason for something like the Stevenson studies. It is different by its very nature. At the core of this is subjectivity - it comes, then, as no surprise that a good portion of evidence for non-reductive phenomena would come from a subjective source, or even be subjective in and of itself. That's what makes this stuff so hard. Again, if someone is going to dismiss a phenomena based on that it's fine by me, I just wouldn't think that a person is really interested in pursuing the truth if that's the case. Taking things with a grain of salt is advisable; ignoring or dismissing things on that same basis is excessive and unjustified.