The ninth reason:

The scholar believes that the hadith is countered by evidence indicating its weakness, its abrogation, or—if it admits of interpretation—the need to interpret it differently. This opposing evidence is of a kind unanimously accepted as admissible, such as a Quranic verse, another hadith, or consensus. This takes two forms:

The first: He believes that the opposing evidence outweighs the hadith overall, so that one of these three explanations must apply, without specifying which. Sometimes he identifies one of them, believing that the hadith has been abrogated or must be interpreted differently. He may, however, be mistaken about abrogation, taking what came later to have come earlier. He may also err in interpretation by assigning the hadith a meaning its wording cannot bear, or one that other evidence rules out.

When he counters the hadith on general grounds, the opposing evidence may not actually support his contention. The opposing hadith may also fall short of the first in the strength of its chain of transmission or its text. The reasons mentioned earlier, along with others, come into play here with regard to the first hadith. Moreover, the claimed consensus usually amounts merely to not knowing of anyone who disagrees.

We have found eminent scholars adopting positions on the grounds that they knew of no dissenting view, even though, in their own judgment, the apparent meaning of the evidence entailed the opposite. Yet a scholar cannot introduce a position that he knows of no one having held, while knowing that others have held the contrary. Some even make their position conditional, saying: “If there is consensus on the matter, it has the strongest claim to be followed; otherwise, my view is such and such.”