[SystemSafety] Bossavit's Leprechauns book

[Olwen Morgan]

While, ideally, we should base our engineering on what we can prove to 
be true, the argument that things are not true because there is no hard 
evidence for them is scientific dilettantism. There is ample reason to 
question the validity of various claims in software engineering not 
because they are not true but because there are many reasons why the 
quality of the evidence may be sufficiently poor that they are not 
proven. Not least among such reasons is the technical difficulty and 
cost of conducting properly controlled trials.

Not true and not proven are not synonymous - as we all learned from the 
proof of Fermat's Last Theorem by Andrew Wiles.

If you want to be a hard-nosed empiricist, you need to be rigorous about 
the design of the experiments by which you test hypotheses. If you want 
to question the validity of published results, that's fine ... but if 
you do, you need to look at all the circumstances in which a study has 
been carried out and document any flaws that you find in the methods 
used. Claims of no proof must be supported by hard evidence of flawed 
investigation.

How many reported studies does Bossavit examine with due scientific rigour?

Find that out and you'll know whether he's hoisted himself by his own 
petard.


Olwen


On 06/12/2018 22:00, Les Chambers wrote:
> Derek
> Thanks but Shock horror.  Sounds like he is devaluing some of the fundamental truths of SE.
> For example the ‘rising cost’ concept is the basis for spending millions on V&V. Righteous
> dollars.
> Have we a tech Trump amongst us pedaling fake news with honeyed words?
> Seriously though, this type of BS does not advance the SE canon.
> Bin it!
> Les
>
>> Les,
>>
>>> Is Bossavit supporting or rejecting the legends. Having read his book, what does he want
> you to
>>> do with the information.
>>   From the open chapter:
>>
>> "The software profession has a problem, widely recognized but
>> which nobody seems willing to do much about. You can think of
>> this problem as a variant of the well known ¿telephone game¿,
>> where some trivial rumor is repeated from one person to the next
>> until it has become distorted beyond recognition and blown up
>> out of all proportion.
>>
>> Unfortunately, the objects of this telephone game are generally
>> considered cornerstone truths of the discipline, to the point that
>> their acceptance now hinders further progress.
>>
>> It is not that these claims are outlandish in themselves; they
>> started as somewhat reasonable hypotheses. The problem is that
>> they have become entrenched as ¿fact¿ supposedly supported
>> by ¿research¿, and attained this elevated status in spite of being
>> merely anecdotal.
>>
>> How we got there
>>
>> One of the ways that anecdote persists is by dressing itself up
>> in the garments of proper scholarship. Suppose you come across
>> the following claim for the first time:..."
>>
>>> Les
>>>
>>>> Les,
>>>>
>>>>> PBL
>>>>> Please explain. Is Bossavit denigrating these concepts by calling them memes, myths or
>>> legends? Is he
>>>> Peter has jumbled together commentary on Bossavit's book, commentary
>>>> on what people on this list have been talking about and his own views.
>>>>
>>>> Bossavit writes in a very readable style and it is clear what
>>>> his discovered (or rather not discovered, i.e., data backing up
>>>> the claims investigated).
>>>>
>>>> -- 
>>>> Derek M. Jones           Software analysis
>>>> tel: +44 (0)1252 520667  blog:shape-of-code.coding-guidelines.com
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> The System Safety Mailing List
>>>> systemsafety at TechFak.Uni-Bielefeld.DE
>>>> Manage your subscription: https://lists.techfak.uni-
> bielefeld.de/mailman/listinfo/systemsafety
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Les Chambers
>>> les at chambers.com.au
>>> +61 (0)412 648 992
>>>
>>>
>>>
>> -- 
>> Derek M. Jones           Software analysis
>> tel: +44 (0)1252 520667  blog:shape-of-code.coding-guidelines.com
>
>
> --
> Les Chambers
> les at chambers.com.au
> +61 (0)412 648 992
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> The System Safety Mailing List
> systemsafety at TechFak.Uni-Bielefeld.DE
> Manage your subscription: https://lists.techfak.uni-bielefeld.de/mailman/listinfo/systemsafety
>