Cite as: 522 U. S. 359 (1998)
Opinion of the Court
take those standards to mean what they say, and to conduct substantial-evidence review on that basis. Even the most consistent and hence predictable Board departure from proper application of those standards will not alter the legal rule by which the agency's factfinding is to be judged.
That principle is not, as Justice Breyer suggests, inconsistent with our decisions according "substantial deference to an agency's interpretation of its own regulations." Thomas Jefferson Univ. v. Shalala, 512 U. S. 504, 512 (1994). Substantive review of an agency's interpretation of its regulations is governed only by that general provision of the Administrative Procedure Act which requires courts to set aside agency action that is "arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, or otherwise not in accordance with law," 5 U. S. C. § 706(2)(A). It falls well within this text to give the agency the benefit of the doubt as to the meaning of its regulation. On-the-record agency factfinding, however, is also governed by a provision that requires the agency action to be set aside if it is "unsupported by substantial evidence," § 706(2)(E)—which is the very specific requirement at issue here. See also 29 U. S. C. § 160(e) ("The findings of the Board with respect to questions of fact if supported by substantial evidence on the record considered as a whole shall be conclusive"). The "substantial evidence" test itself already gives the agency the benefit of the doubt, since it requires not the degree of evidence which satisfies the court that the requisite fact exists, but merely the degree which could satisfy a reasonable factfinder. See Columbian Enameling & Stamping Co., 306 U. S., at 300. This is an objective test, and there is no room within it for deference to an agency's eccentric view of what a reasonable factfinder ought to demand. We do not, moreover (we could not possibly), search to find revisions of the agency's rules—revisions of the requisite fact that the adjudication is supposed to determine— hidden in the agency's factual findings. In the regime envisioned by Justice Breyer—a regime in which inadequate
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