MarcoChierici

If anything can go wrong, it will

In this page, there are not all Murphy's Laws: to find them, one could do an internet search. Instead, I collected and presented here some of them, with regard to the scientific field and the less known ones. Enjoy!

• Murphy's Law of Research:
  Enough research will tend to support whatever theory.
• Research supports a specific theory depending on the amount of funds dedicated to it.
• Rule of Accuracy:
  When working toward the solution of a problem, it always helps if you know the answer.
  Corollary:
  Provided, of course, that you know there is a problem.
• All's well that ends.
• A failure will not appear till a unit has passed final inspection.
• To err is human, but to really foul things up requires a computer.
• We don't know one millionth of one percent about anything.
• A computer makes as many mistakes in two seconds as 20 men working 20 years make.
• Any circuit design must contain at least one part which is obsolete, two parts which are unobtainable and three parts which are still under development.
• If mathematically you end up with the incorrect answer, try multiplying by the page number.
• Computers are unreliable, but humans are even more unreliable. Any system which depends on human reliability is unreliable.
• The Harvard Principle:
  Under the most rigorously controlled conditions of pressure, temperature, volume, humidity, and other variables the organism will do as it damn well pleases.
• If you can't understand it, it is intuitively obvious.
• In designing any type of construction, no overall dimension can be totaled correctly after 4:30 p.m. on Friday. The correct total will become self-evident at 8:15 a.m. on Monday.
• The only perfect science is hind-sight.
• If it's not in the computer, it doesn't exist.
• If an experiment works, something has gone wrong.
• Any simple theory will be worded in the most complicated way.
• Each profession talks to itself in it's own language, apparently there is no Rosetta Stone
• It is never wise to let a piece of electronic equipment know that you are in a hurry.
• The most ominous phrase in science: "Uh-oh..."
• The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not "Eureka!" but "That's funny..."
• For any given software, the moment you manage to master it, a new version of that software appears.
  Addition: The new version always manages to change the one feature you need most.
• Measurements will be quoted in the least practical unit; velocity, for example, will be measured in 'furlongs-per-fortnight'.
• In electronics repair the part with the highest failure rate will always be located in the least accessible area of the equipment.
• If you install a 50¢ fuse to protect a 100$ component, the 100$ component will blow to protect the 50¢ fuse.
• Research Law:
  No matter how clever and complete your research is, there is always someone who knows more.
• Any wire cut to length will be too short.
• Laws of Replacement Parts
  • A failed 25¢ part cannot be replaced by a new 25¢ part, but by a sub-assembly whose cost is equal to or greater than that of the device in need of the part
  • The cost and availability of a replacement part are in inverse proportion to the cost of the whole system: a $1500 device will fail because of the burnout of a 25¢ capacitor. But the 25-¢ capacitor is either
    • no longer manufactured
    • manufactured only by a company in Outer Mongolia with an 18-month backlog
    • available only as part of a $1450 sub-assembly
• All things mechanical/electrical will catastrophically fail after the guarantee has expired, unless an extended guarantee has been purchased.
• First Law of Linear Equations:
  Given any system n linear equations, there will be n+1 unknowns