Murphy's law

Murphy's law (sometimes confused with Finagle's Corollary or in some western cultures as Sod's law) is a popular adage in Western culture developed in rocket-sled tests in the late 1940s, which broadly states that things will go wrong in any given situation, if you give them a chance. "If there's more than one way to do a job, and one of those ways will result in disaster, then somebody will do it that way." It is most often cited as "Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong" (or, alternately, "Anything that can go wrong, will"), per researcher Nicholas T. Spark, author of the book 'A History of Murphy's Law'.http://www.historyofmurphyslaw.com

In American culture the law was named somewhat sarcasticallyhttp://www.improb.com/airchives/paperair/volume9/v9i5/murphy/murphy1.html http://www.improb.com/airchives/paperair/volume9/v9i5/murphy/murphy2.html by Stapp's Team working on Project MX981 at Edwards Air Force Base after Major Edward A. Murphy, Jr., a development engineer contributing support measurement technology for a brief time on rocket sled experiments done by the United States Air Force in 1949 with inveterate adage collector and the law's undoubted populizer Doctor/Colonel John Paul Stapp, a former next-door neighbor and friend of Murphy.

Author Nick T. Spark concludes 'A History of Murphy's Law' that differing recollections years later are unable to pinpoint who exactly coined the phrase in its now well known form in the several months since the team tried new measurement devices developed by the eponymous Edward Murphy, but that it was coined in adverse reaction to something Murphy said when his devices failed to perform and eventually cast into its present form prior to a press conference some months later, the first ever (of many) given by Colonel Stapp, The fastest man on earth.

The letter of the law

Accounts differ as to the precise origin of Murphy's law and the details about how it was initially formulated, which conflicts (a long running interpersonal feud, in truth) were unreported until Spark researched the matter. By far the most in-depth discussion of the various accounts is the book A History of Murphy's Law by Nick T. Spark, which expands upon and documents his original four part article published in 2003 (Annals of Improbable Research (AIR)http://www.improb.com/airchives/paperair/volume9/v9i5/murphy/murphy0.html) on the controversy: Why Everything You Know About Murphy's Law is Wrong. From 1947 to 1949, a project known as MX981 took place on Muroc Field (later renamed Edwards Air Force Base) for the purpose of testing the human tolerance for g-forces during rapid deceleration. The tests used a rocket sled mounted on a railroad track with a series of hydraulic brakes at the end.

Initial tests used a humanoid crash test dummy strapped to a seat on the sled, but subsequent tests were performed by medical doctor John Paul Stapp, at that time an Air Force Captain. During the tests, questions were raised about the accuracy of the instrumentation used to measure the g-forces Captain Stapp was experiencing. Edward Murphy proposed using electronic strain gauges attached to the restraining clamps of Stapp's harness to measure the force exerted on them by his rapid deceleration. Murphy was engaged in supporting similar research using high speed centrifuges to generate g-forces. Murphy's assistant wired the harness, and a trial was run using a chimpanzee.

The sensors provided a zero reading, however; it became apparent that they had been installed incorrectly, with each sensor wired wrongly. It was at this point that a disgusted Murphy made his pronouncement, despite being offered the time and chance to calibrate and test the sensor installation prior to the test proper, which he declined somewhat irritably getting off on the wrong foot with the MX981 team. In an interview conducted by Nick Spark, George Nichols, another engineer who was present, stated that Murphy blamed the failure on his assistant after the failed test, saying, "If that guy has any way of making a mistake, he will." Nichols' account is that "Murphy's law" came about through conversation among the other members of the team; it was condensed to "If it can happen, it will happen," and named for Murphy in mockery of what Nichols perceived as arrogance on Murphy's part. Another account credits Doctor Captain Stapp (known both as the fastest man on Earth and a habitual collector of adages), with espousing it shortly afterwards during a press conference. Others, including Edward Murphy's surviving son Robert Murphy, deny Nichols' account (which is supported by Hill, both interviewed by Spark), and claim that the phrase did originate with Edward Murphy. According to Robert Murphy's account, his father's statement was along the lines of "If there's more than one way to do a job, and one of those ways will result in disaster, then somebody will do it that way." Other documents indicate that Robert A. Murphy himself changed his story several times on several different occasions, including on a lengthy radio station interview which survives.

In any case, the phrase first received public attention during a press conference in which Stapp was asked how it was that nobody had been severely injured during the rocket sled tests. Stapp replied that it was because they always took Murphy's Law under consideration; he then summarized the law and said that in general, it meant that it was important to consider all the possibilities (possible things that could go wrong) before doing a test and act to counteract them. Thus Stapp's usage and Murphy's alledged usage are very different in outlook and attitude. One is sour, the other an affirmation of the predictible being able to be surmounted, usually by sufficient planning and redundancy. Hill and Nichol's believe Murphy was unwilling to take the responsibility for the device's initial failure (by itself a blip of no large significance) and is to be doubly-damned for not allowing the MX981 team time to validate the sensor's operability and for trying to blame an underling when doing so in the embarrassing aftermath.

Variations

Murphy's law has taken on many different formulations. In 1952, the proverb was phrased "Anything That Can Possibly Go Wrong, Does" in the epigraph of John Sack's The Butcher: The Ascent of Yerupaja. Possibly the earliest printed use of Murphy's name in connection with the law is in Lloyd Mallan's 1955 book, Men, Rockets and Space Rats: "Colonel Stapp's favorite takeoff on sober scientific laws—Murphy's Law, Stapp calls it—'Everything that can possibly go wrong will go wrong'."

The spirit of the law

Regardless of the exact composition and origin of the phrase, its spirit embodies the principle of defensive design — anticipating the mistakes the end-user is likely to make. Murphy's g-force sensors failed because there existed two different ways to connect them; one way would result in correct readings, while the other would result in no readings at all. The end-user — Murphy's assistant, in the historical account — had a choice to make when connecting the wires. When the wrong choice was made, the sensors did not do their job properly. Thus, defensive design is sometimes referred to as a "Murphy proofing" procedure.

In most well-designed technology intended for use by the average consumer, incorrect connections are made difficult. For example, the 3.5-inch floppy disk used in many personal computers will not easily fit into the drive unless it is oriented correctly. In contrast, the older 5.25-inch floppy disk could be inserted in a variety of orientations that might damage the disk or drive. The newer CD-ROM and DVD technologies permit one incorrect orientation — the disc may be inserted upside-down. A defensive designer knows that if it is possible for the disc to be inserted the wrong way, someone will eventually try it. Fatalists observe that even if it theoretically is not possible to perform something incorrectly, someone will eventually manage it or, as Silvermoon's law puts it: Nothing is foolproof to a sufficiently talented fool.

From its initial public announcement, Murphy's law quickly spread to various technical cultures connected to aerospace engineering. Before long, variants had passed into the popular imagination, changing as they went. Generally, the spirit of Murphy's law captures the common tendency to emphasize the negative things that occur in everyday life; in this sense, the law is typically formulated as some variant of "If anything can go wrong, it will," a variant often known as "Finagle's law" or "Sod's law" (chiefly British). Laws such as Murphy's are a direct expression of such seeming perversities in the order of the universe.

Additional mutations of the law and its corollaries have developed, many of them meta-laws in some way, either through some form of self-reference or referral to other laws or analogies. For instance, the buttered-bread analogy could be further extended: "The chance of a dropped slice of bread landing buttered-side down on a new carpet is proportional to the price of the carpet." (If the buttered side falls facing up, then obviously the wrong side is buttered.) A further example is Murphy's Ultimate Corollary: "If it could have gone wrong earlier and it did not, it ultimately would have been beneficial for it to have." John Gall's systemantics offers further expansion of Murphy's law.

"Laws" can occasionally be found to lead to a paradox, or which have positive outcomes; for example: when a cat is dropped from above a certain height, it will always land on its feet. In almost a canonical example of the hackish love for wordplay and cultural in-jokes, it has been noted that, therefore, if you strap a piece of buttered toast to the back of a cat, butter side up, and drop the cat out a window, it will fall to approximately a foot above the street, and hover there, spinning.

Some state that Murphy's law cannot operate as a subset of something useful; for example: "It will start raining as soon as I start washing my car, except when I wash the car for the purpose of causing rain." O'Toole's commentary on Murphy's law is: "Murphy was an optimist!" These mutant versions demonstrate Murphy's law acting on itself, or perhaps Finagle's law acting on Murphy's law. These perversions of Murphy's Law can be summed up in Silverman's Paradox: "If Murphy's Law can go wrong, it will."

Author Arthur Bloch has compiled a number of books full of corollaries to Murphy's law and variations thereof. These include the original Murphy's Law (1977) and Murphy's Law Book Two (1980), which are very general in scope, and the domain-specific volumes, Murphy's Law: Doctors: Malpractice Makes Perfect and Murphy's Law: Lawyers: Wronging the Rights in the Legal Profession!.

Murphy's Law is sometimes also presented as a life philosophy. Also embodying defensive design, many simply see it as a way of saying in the approach of anything whatsoever that could have a possible flaw (be it an engineering project, a romantic relationship, an argumentative case, carrying an upright bass down a flight of stairs, or putting on your suit), then it's always within good measure to make the necessary precautions to make sure that those flaws can't happen. Many see it as the initial meaning behind what Murphy was saying, a simple philosophy of defensive design that has been highly misinterpreted. However, this is left open to controversy.

Examples

A slice of buttered bread, when dropped, will always land butter-side down.
When you need an item that is in a heap, it will always be the one at the bottom.
Buses take ages to arrive, but when they do they always arrive in sets of three (in Britain "you wait ages for a bus, then two come along at once!"). There actually is a logical explanation for this: the first bus is slowed down because of the time needed to let passengers get on and off. The subsequent buses are (typically) not allowed to pass the first bus, so you tend to end up with a full bus followed by a line of empty ones.
The day you forget your umbrella, it pours with rain.
When graphing, the graph paper is always one square too small for the perfect scale
When caught in a traffic jam, the lane that you are in will always be the slowest to move. (This joke was played out in the opening sequence of the film Office Space, where one of the main characters changed lanes multiple times, all in vain as the traffic around him moved.) This also has a logical explanation. In general, the lane with the fewest cars in it is most likely to move the fastest. Therefore, since you're statistically more likely to be one of the members of the lane with the most cars, your lane will more often than not be the slow one.
Nothing is as easy as it looks.
Everything takes longer than you think. Or, everything takes twice as long as it should; excepting that which appears easy, taking three times as long.
Anything that can go wrong will go wrong, and at the worst possible time.
If there is a possibility of several things going wrong, the one that will cause the most damage will be the one to go wrong.
If something simply cannot go wrong, it will anyway.
If you perceive that there are four possible ways in which a procedure can go wrong, and circumvent these, then a fifth way, unprepared for, will promptly develop.
Left to themselves, things tend to go from bad to worse.
If everything seems to be going well, you have obviously overlooked something.
Nature always sides with the hidden flaw.
It is impossible to make anything foolproof because fools are so ingenious.
Whenever you set out to do something, something else must be done first.
Every solution breeds new problems.
Change is inevitable, except from a vending machine.
A Smith & Wesson beats four aces.
Junk will grow to fill the available cupboard space.
All small objects of value will disappear when set down.
Magellan's Allegory: If you stop and ask someone for directions, and they tell you "You can't miss it"... then be assured that you will.
If you make it idiot-proof, someone will make a better idiot.
The light at the end of the tunnel is that of an oncoming train.
When you put your pants on without looking — they will always be on backwards.
A series of events will go wrong in the most negative sequence.
Airline Travel Variation: The time you have to catch a flight is inversely proportional to the distance to the gate.
50/50/90-If there is a 50/50 chance to get it right, there is a 90% chance that you will get it wrong.
Nothing ever gets built to budget or to deadline (also known as Cheop's Law).
Good/Fast/Cheap - If you need something good fast, it won't be cheap. If you need something cheap fast, it won't be good. If you need something good cheap, it won't be fast.
The day you wash your car is the day it will rain

1. If something can go wrong, it will. 2. If nothing can go wrong it will. 3. When things can't get any worse, they do. John Emsley
Do not worry. It will get worst. If it does not, is because you are not worrying anymore (Songo's conclusion).

References

External links

Adages | Risk analysis | Eponymous laws