Murphy

Murphy's Law & Its Corollaries

by Jerry Cates

History of Murphy's Law ... Murphy's Antithesis ... Bugsinthenews

The following list was compiled in the same spirit as the original list kept by George Nichols. Like Nichols' list, additions are made on a regular basis. Its sources are many and sundry. Murphy's Law and its variants began to influence my thinking in the 1960's, when I was preparing war plans for the SAC B-52's and B-47's on alert at a USAF base in Florida. Later, in Vietnam, that logic was easily transmogrified to fit jungle warfare and the research conducted at my unit. Then, at HRB Singer, Inc. (whose corporate demise, years later, proved illustrative of numerous corollaries of Murphy's Law), it fit right into the infrared remote sensing and programmed learning projects I worked on.

At Texas Instruments (a corporation that has mastered every corollary of Murphy's Law ever known, and many that have not yet been published), I found new applications for Murphy's dictum in systems design and computer programming. There an engineer named Matt Syptak taught me a famous paradox regarding fuses and circuits, and my own work in computer programming taught me Lubarsky's Law of cybernetic entomology the hard way. Since leaving TI, I've personally witnessed (and too often demonstrated) how effectively Murphy's Law works in real estate investing, pest control, entomology, nematology, and arachnology research, environmental science, firefighting, emergency medicine, mountaineering, and law enforcement. Not to mention, of course, website design, and when designing trademarks and putting patent applications together. There seems to be no human endeavor that cannot be better explained, or improved upon, by the judicious application of Murphy's Law...

F. P. Wieringa, in a recent paper on medical device innovation that he co-authored with M. J. Poley, A.C.M. Dumay, and A.F.W. van der Steen, notes that "The best perception of Murphy's Law for anybody involved in health technology innovation might be: 'If we -designers- overlook any way that they -users, or even technicians- can do it wrong, they will'." Wieringa then adds that "This becomes becomes particularly important for products or procedures that are performed millions of times around the world."

Wieringa then noted how from 1985 to 1994 at least 24 hospital patients were electrocuted in the USA merely because medical personnel sometimes mistook IEC main power plugs for female ECG patient cables, inserting male ECG leads into 115VAC power plugs with predictably disastrous results.

One might think a highly trained doctor, nurse, or medical technician would never make so obvious an error (the plugs involved are superficially similar, but not really that much alike), but they did. The solution, he notes, was to forbid the use of unprotected "banana plug" patient leads in the medical setting. We could presume that once the FDA made that decree in 1997, all such electrocutions have ceased, but Murphy's Law (see, for example, numbers 8 and 9, below) counsels otherwise. It is worthy of note that recent inventions have sought to resolve these risks by interposing special devices between medical instrumentation equipment and the patient they attach to. Again, however, Murphy's Law continues to counsel that even these measures are doomed to failure, at least once in a while.

Does this mean that there is no hope? Far from it. Murphy's Law, though not a complete cure for all human foibles, offers us hope that we can minimize them. In every organization there is at least one person capable of unintentionally circumventing every possible safeguard erected to prevent mistakes, but Murphy's Law teaches us to keep working on better and better safeguards, and it works. Since 1997 there have probably been a few patient electrocutions in U.S. hospitals, but still far fewer than occurred in the previous decade. At least, one hopes this is the case...

The original Law: If anything can go wrong, it will.
An early variant: Whatever can go wrong will go wrong, at the worst possible time.
An early corollary: Nothing is as easy as it looks.
Everything takes longer than you think.
Whatever can go wrong will.
If several things can go wrong, expect the one that will cause the most damage.
If there is a worse time for something to go wrong, that is when it will happen.
If something can't go wrong, it will anyway.
Given only four ways that a procedure can possibly go wrong, and a successful circumvention of all of them, a fifth will materialize.
Left to themselves, things always go from bad to worse.
If everything is going well, something important has been overlooked.
Nature sides with the hidden flaw.
The quest to make things foolproof is doomed to failure; fools are ingenious.
Every solution creates new problems
Whenever you set out to do something, something else must be done first.
Enough research will support any theory.
The legibility of a copy is inversely proportional to its value.
Given a long road upon which a one-way bridge and two cars are placed at random, the two cars will travel in opposite directions and meet at the bridge.
Things get worse under pressure.
Necessity is the mother of strange bed-fellows.
Any bus that can be the wrong bus will be; all other busses are out of service or full.
The more you run over a dead cat, the flatter it gets.
Everything goes wrong all at once.
If you need six buttons, you will find five in your button box.
After things go from bad to worse, the cycle repeats itself.
Matter will be damaged in direct proportion to its value
You cannot successfully determine beforehand which side of the bread to butter.
Paper is always strongest at its perforations.
The odds that a slice of bread will fall on the floor with the buttered side down is directly proportional to your hunger level.
Murphy was an optimist.
The lane you are not in moves fastest.
If there isn't a law, there will be.
That history repeats itself is the main thing wrong with history.
Team members most able to help the team quit the team or are reassigned.
The bus that was leaving as you arrived at the bus stop was your bus.
Logic is a systematic method of coming to the wrong conclusion with confidence.
Whenever a system becomes completely defined, someone will discover something that abolishes the system or expands it beyond recognition.
Your first night shift in the Emergency Room occurs on a night with a full moon.
Technology is dominated by those who manage what they do not understand.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization.
Eat a live toad first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day.
Needlessly disturbing a thing at rest is folly of the highest magnitude.
Nature lies.
Dust breeds.
Enough isn't.
First determine if you are between a dog and its lamppost.
Anyone who puts up with a lot of crap will receive more crap.
The opulence of an office's decor varies inversely with the fundamental competency of the person occupying the office.
An expert progressively learns more and more about less and less, and eventually knows everything about nothing.
The claim that the universe contains 300 billion stars is believable; assertions that a bench has wet paint on it must be tested.
All great discoveries are made by mistake.
If it's stupid and it works it isn't stupid.
A student who improves worked harder; a student whose performance declines has a poor teacher.
First draw the curve, then plot the reading.
Nothing ever gets built on schedule or within budget.
Don't worry about the bullet with your name on it; worry about the bullet addressed "To Whom it May Concern."
Genius cannot overcome preoccupation with detail.
Good students move away.
There is always an easier way.
Never tell your shift captain you have nothing to do.
Throwing something away guarantees its immediate usefulness.
Clearing all rooms without meeting any resistance means you kicked in the door of the wrong house.
The first myth of management is that it exists.
A failure cannot appear before the unit has passed its final inspection.
We don't know one millionth of one percent about anything.
Shift commanders, not God, establish shift priorities; there is a difference.
There is no free lunch.
There ain't no such thing as a free lunch (a.k.a. "tanstaafl")
A teacher who is late for class and does not meet the principal in the hall is late for a faculty meeting.
Complex questions have simple, easy to comprehend wrong answers.
Any given program, when running, is obsolete.
The faster a computer performs, the faster it will crash.
Next time you punch out a handcuffed prisoner for spitting on you, smile and look straight at the camera.
To the powerful wisdom is a sign of weakness; a wise person can lead without power, but only the powerful can lead without wisdom.
Thimk.
Eschew obfuscation.
Technology doesn't transfer.
Never reveal to a mechanical object that you are in a hurry.
A person who tortures animals and wets the bed is either a serial killer or works for internal affairs.
Everything is cold except what should be.
Unanimity is proof of cowardice and uncritical thought.
New students come from schools that teach nothing.
Hot glass looks exactly like cold glass.
Zeraralwazmanimororsezassezanzerareorses.
The breaking of eggs is no guarantee that an omelet worth eating will be created.
You get the most of what you need the least.
Things equal to nothing else are equal to each other.
Every group has its fool; if you are in a group, and are unable to identify its fool, you are it.
Taxes are not levied for the benefit of the taxed.
The fact that monkeys have hands should give us pause.
Universities cannot give students brains, but they can give them diplomas.
Tolerances accumulate.
Death is nature's way of telling you to slow down.
If there are twelve clowns in a ring, you can jump in and start reciting impeccable Shakespeare, but to that audience you will just be the thirteenth clown.
If it tastes good, you can't have it; if it tastes bad, you have to clean your plate.
The problem student is the child of a school board member.
You get faster service when the restaurant is full than when it is half empty.
Managers manage by the book, even when they don't know who wrote the book or even which book.
The function of a design engineer is to make things difficult for the fabricator and impossible for the serviceman.
The real expert predicts the job will take the longest and cost the most.
For every action there is a side effect.
If a thing cannot be fitted into another thing smaller than itself, someone will do it.
Coasting is the definition of going down hill.
Negative slack increases.
You travel fastest when traveling alone, but when you arrive you've nobody to share it with.
Never reveal what you wouldn't do.
Anything cut to length will be too short.
Anything that happens enough times to irritate will happen at least once more.
Eternal boredom is the price of constant vigilance.
It is impossible to determine how deep a puddle is without stepping into it.
Everything depends.
The effort required to effect a course correction increases geometrically with time.
Perfect stability is only achieved when all your time is spent doing nothing but reporting on the nothing you are doing.
Matt Syptak's Law: If a fuse is installed to protect a circuit, the circuit will blow to protect the fuse.
All complex circuit designs contain one obsolete part, two unobtainable parts, and three parts still under development.
All complex systems that work evolved from simple systems that work.
Any system dependent on human reliability is unreliable.
Under rigorously controlled conditions of pressure, temperature, volume, humidity, and other variables an organism will behave as it pleases.
Nothing ever just goes away.
Good intentions combined with stupidity are impossible to outthink.
An object in motion is going in the wrong direction.
An object at rest is in the wrong place.
A shortcut is the longest distance between two points.
Assigning N persons to write a compiler produces an N-1 pass compiler.
All complicated systems or programs will, if examined from the right angle, become more complicated.
If you don't understand it, it is intuitively obvious.
In any collection of data, the figure most obviously correct, beyond all need of checking, is the mistake.
The sweetness of the buyer's secretary varies directly with the odds that the competition already has the order.
The only perfect science is hindsight.
The real world is a special case.
A proliferation of laws always begets a proliferation of loop-holes.
If an experiment works, something has gone wrong.
Whatever goes up must come down.
Dropped instruments roll to a least accessible corner.
Simple theories must be described using complex vocabularies.
If you build a system that even a fool can operate, only a fool will want to use it.
The degree of a project's technical competence is inversely proportional to the involvement of upper management.
Never share a foxhole with anyone braver than you are.
No battle plan ever survives contact with the enemy.
Not all cookies reside in jars.
All machines are amplifiers.
The most dangerous thing in a combat zone is a gung-ho officer with a map and half a brain.
The problem with taking the easy way out is that the enemy has already mined it.
The buddy system gives the enemy someone else to shoot at.
People do not change; they become more so.
The further you advance beyond your own positions, the greater the odds your artillery will fall short.
Incoming fire always has the right of way.
If your advance is going well, you are walking into an ambush.
The quartermaster has two sizes: too large and too small.
The crucial memorandum will be snagged by the paper clip on the overlaying correspondence.
If you need a supervisor in a hurry, doze off.
Suppressive fire is most accurate when used on abandoned positions.
As the economy gets better, everything else gets worse.
Any non-trivial computer program contains at least one bug.
Lubarsky's Law of Cybernetic Entomology: There's always one more bug.
Work flows to the most competent member of the team until that member submerges.
Nobody who wants the presidency enough to spend two years organizing and campaigning for it can be trusted.
The only thing more accurate than incoming enemy fire is incoming friendly fire.
Don't be conspicuous; inside the combat zone, it draws enemy fire; outside the combat zone, it draws sergeants.
If your sergeant can see you, so can the enemy.
All the good ones are taken.
Nothing is ever accomplished by a reasonable man.
If he or she isn't taken, there's a reason.
Deficiencies never surface during dry runs.
A distinguished, elderly scientist who states something is possible is usually right; a distinguished, elderly scientist who states something is impossible is usually wrong.
Brains x Beauty x Availability = 0.
It is always darkest just before the lights go out.
Everything that appears too good to be true is.
People often stumble over the truth, but most of the time they pick themselves up and continue on as though nothing happened.
Adding manpower to a late project makes it later.
Clearly stated instructions consistently produce multiple interpretations.
No matter which way you ride a bicycle, it's uphill against the wind.
It is always the wrong time of month.
If the research lavished on the female bosom had been diverted to space exploration, hot-dog stands would now prosper on the moon.
Information travels most efficiently to those with the least need to know.
All progress is based on a universal innate desire on the part of every organism to live beyond its income.
If everything is coming your way, you are in the wrong lane.
The light at the end of the tunnel is the headlight of an oncoming train.
It is impossible to produce a baby in one month by impregnating nine women.
Everything over the hill picks up speed.
Anything is possible; nothing is easy.
The vehicle in front travels slower.
History proves nothing.
The location of a drip bears no relation to the location of a roof leak.
It is harder to find a job than keep one.
A little humility is arrogance.
Stones in boots migrate to the point of greatest pressure
The weight of a backpack increases in direct proportion to the amount of food consumed from it; running out of food speeds the rate at which the pack's weight goes up.
Anyone can do any amount of work if it isn't the work they are supposed to be doing.
The number of stones in a boot is directly proportional to the number of hours on the trail.
A statement may be true independently of the illogical reasoning that created it.
The difficulty of finding a trail marker is directly proportional to the consequences of failing to find it.
Expenditures and revenues always seek the same level.
Guarding against the arbitrary is futile.
A lost object being sought is always found in the last place examined.
The remaining distance to a campsite remains constant as twilight approaches
The integral of the gravitational potential taken around any loop trail always comes out positive.
What's good politics is bad economics; what's bad politics is good economics; what's good economics is bad politics; what's bad economics is good politics
If it can be borrowed and it can be broken, you will borrow it and you will break it.
Death is nature's way of telling you to plan ahead.