http://www.murphyslaws.net/edition.htm#f
From “the complete edition of Murphy’s Laws”.

I would appreciate feedback on these. Some I agree with. Some I find abhorrent. Some I’m ambivalent about. Some I’m confused by. Some I rely on.

You?

Fett’s Law of the Lab
Never replicate a successful experiment.

Finagle’s Creed
Science is Truth. Don’t be misled by fact.

Finagle’s First Law
If an experiment works, something has gone wrong.

Finagle’s Second Law
No matter what the experiment’s result, there will always be someone eager to:
(a) misinterpret it.
(b) fake it. or
© believe it supports his own pet theory.

Finagle’s Third Law
In any collection of data, the figure most obviously correct, beyond all need of checking, is the mistake.
Corollaries
No one whom you ask for help will see it.
Everyone who stops by with unsought advice will see it immediately.

Finagle’s Fourth Law
Once a job is fouled up, anything done to improve it only makes it worse.

Finagle’s Law According to Niven
The perversity of the universe tends to a maximum.

Finagle’s Laws of Information
The information you have is not what you want.
The information you want is not what you need.
The information you need is not what you can obtain.
The information you can obtain costs more than you want to pay.

Finagle’s Rules
Ever since the first scientific experiment, man has been plagued by the increasing antagonism of nature. It seems only right that nature should be logical and neat, but experience has shown that this is not the case. A further series of rules has been formulated, designed to help man accept the pigheadedness of nature.

• To study a subject best, understand it thoroughly before you start.
• Always keep a record of data. It indicates you’ve been working.
• Always draw your curves, then plot the reading.
• In case of doubt, make it sound convincing.

Law of Continuity
Experiments should be reproducible. They should all fail in the same way.
Correspondence Corollary
An experiment may be considered a success if no more than half of your data must be discarded to obtain the result

• When you don’t know what you are doing, do it NEATLY.
• Teamwork is essential; it allows you to blame someone else.
• Always verify your witchcraft.
• Be sure to obtain meteorological data before leaving on vacation.
• Do not believe in miracles. Rely on them.

Given that they are supposed to be Murphyesque, and (I hope) somewhat satirical, I think abhorrence is maybe a bit strong, but I’d say many were more applicable to engineering than science.

I like number 3, which reminded me of a conversation I had with an engineer supervising a dam construction in Canberra many years ago:

me: You are excavating much deeper than I expected.
Eng: Yes, we are having to remove a lot of unexpected soft material.
me: Why is that tall column of rock left in the middle?
Eng: That’s where the geotechs put the borehole.

The Rev Dodgson said:

Given that they are supposed to be Murphyesque, and (I hope) somewhat satirical, I think abhorrence is maybe a bit strong, but I’d say many were more applicable to engineering than science.

I like number 3, which reminded me of a conversation I had with an engineer supervising a dam construction in Canberra many years ago:

me: You are excavating much deeper than I expected.
Eng: Yes, we are having to remove a lot of unexpected soft material.
me: Why is that tall column of rock left in the middle?
Eng: That’s where the geotechs put the borehole.

Dear oh dear.

Hanlon’s Razorprov. A corollary of Finagle’s Law, similar to Occam’s Razor, that reads
“Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.”

The Rev Dodgson said:

Given that they are supposed to be Murphyesque, and (I hope) somewhat satirical, I think abhorrence is maybe a bit strong, but I’d say many were more applicable to engineering than science.

I like number 3, which reminded me of a conversation I had with an engineer supervising a dam construction in Canberra many years ago:

me: You are excavating much deeper than I expected.
Eng: Yes, we are having to remove a lot of unexpected soft material.
me: Why is that tall column of rock left in the middle?
Eng: That’s where the geotechs put the borehole.

OMG. Michael V would like that.

> Fett’s Law of the Lab. Never replicate a successful experiment.

That is so tempting. I tend to follow that law. I have one successful experiment (PhD thesis) where I was never able to explain why I had succeeded when 90% of those who repeated the experiment failed.

> Finagle’s Creed. Science is Truth. Don’t be misled by fact.

I am ambivalent and confused by this one. Pet theories in science can be wrong, for example buffy and I are currently having trouble with researchers who are doing a chicken little impersonation over the myopia epidemic, when our data shows no signs of such an epidemic. On the other hand, “fact” may be a misinterpretation or statistical outlier, where the science is truth.

> Finagle’s Third Law … is the mistake. No one whom you ask for help will see it. Everyone who stops by with unsought advice will see it immediately.

I’ve run across this far too often to doubt it. But I strongly disagree with “the figure most obviously correct, beyond all need of checking, is the mistake”.

> Finagle’s Fourth Law. Once a job is fouled up, anything done to improve it only makes it worse.

Can you say: “Microsoft update”. Very true when it comes to software – ALL software.

> Finagle’s Laws of Information. The information you have is not what you want. The information you want is not what you need. The information you need is not what you can obtain. The information you can obtain costs more than you want to pay.

I ran across this one looking for heights of the tallest mountains in Antarctica. The Japanese data costs an absolute fortune for any patch of land bigger than a postage stamp.

> Ever since the first scientific experiment, man has been plagued by the increasing antagonism of nature. It seems only right that nature should be logical and neat, but experience has shown that this is not the case.

Bioscience especially. But every branch of science has this problem, for example the Pioneer anomaly.

> To study a subject best, understand it thoroughly before you start.

Yes. Except … I’m thinking Rhie-Chow differencing, which revolutionised fluid mechanics. If Rhie & Chow had understood the subject before they started then they never would have attempted it, because literally dozens of other researchers before them had tried and failed.

> Always keep a record of data. It indicates you’ve been working.

Yes.

> Always draw your curves, then plot the reading. In case of doubt, make it sound convincing.

I find both of those abhorrent.

> Experiments should be reproducible. They should all fail in the same way.

I am ambivalent and confused by this one. There are always random and systematic errors. Systematic errors are reproducible. On the other hand, experiments that fail in different ways can tell us that both are wrong. eg. Cold fusion and the early mis-detection of exoplanets and gravitational waves.

> When you don’t know what you are doing, do it NEATLY. Always verify your witchcraft.

No and no. With the caveat that whenever possible I like to do my witchcraft (derive new mathematical equations) two different ways.

> Teamwork is essential; it allows you to blame someone else.

Shudder. On the last paper on corrosion of aircraft, I and someone else on the team both ended up blaming the other for a mistake, when peer review discovered a flaw. Oops.

> Do not believe in miracles. Rely on them.

I like to quote this. It’s not true, but in science you have to be lucky.

> An experiment may be considered a success if no more than half of your data must be discarded to obtain the result.

For neutrino detection by Cerenkov radiation, at least 99% of the data has to be thrown away to obtain the result, but that’s still a success. Um, buffy, I’m seriously considering discarding a substantial fraction of the data to make this Figure look better. The data with the least accurate age at onset.