Murphy's law

Not to be confused with Muphry's law.

Murphy's law is an adage or epigram that is typically stated as: "Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong". It is usually meant as a purely sarcastic musing that things always go wrong.

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The perceived perversity of the universe has long been a subject of comment, and precursors to the modern version of Murphy's law are not hard to find. Recent research in this area has been carried on to a significant extent by members of the American Dialect Society. ADS member Stephen Goranson has found a version of the law, not yet generalized or bearing that name, in a report by Alfred Holt at an 1877 meeting of an engineering society:

It is found that anything that can go wrong at sea generally does go wrong sooner or later, so it is not to be wondered that owners prefer the safe to the scientific.... Sufficient stress can hardly be laid on the advantages of simplicity. The human factor cannot be safely neglected in planning machinery. If attention is to be obtained, the engine must be such that the engineer will be disposed to attend to it.

American Dialect Society member Bill Mullins has found a slightly broader version of the aphorism in reference to stage magic. The British stage magician Nevil Maskelyne wrote in 1908:

It is an experience common to all men to find that, on any special occasion, such as the production of a magical effect for the first time in public, everything that can go wrong will go wrong. Whether we must attribute this to the malignity of matter or to the total depravity of inanimate things, whether the exciting cause is hurry, worry, or what not, the fact remains.

Murphy's law emerged in its most modern form no later than 1952, as an epigraph to a mountaineering book by Jack Sack, who described it as an "ancient mountaineering adage":

Anything that can possibly go wrong, does.

Fred R. Shapiro, the editor of the Yale Book of Quotations, has shown that in 1952 the adage was called "Murphy's law" in a book by Anne Roe, quoting an unnamed physicist:

There were a number of particularly delightful incidents. There is, for example, the physicist who introduced me to one of my favorite "laws," which he described as "Murphy's law or the fourth law of thermodynamics" (actually there were only three last I heard) which states: "If anything can go wrong, it will."

Earlier, in May 1951, in Genetic Psychology Monographs volume 43 page 204 Anne Roe gives a transcript of an interview (part of a Thematic Apperception Test, asking impressions on a photograph) with Theoretical Physicist number 3: "...As for himself he realized that this was the inexorable working of the second law of the thermodynamics which stated Murphy's law ‘If anything can go wrong it will’. I always liked Murphy's law,...." Anne Roe's papers are in the American Philosophical Society archives in Philadelphia; those records (as noted by Stephen Goranson on the American Dialect Society list 12/31/2008) identify the interviewed physicist as Howard Percy "Bob" Robertson (1903-1961). Robertson's papers are at the Caltech archives; there, in a letter Robertson offers Roe an interview within the first three months of 1949 (as noted by Goranson on American Dialect Society list 5/9/2009). The Robertson interview apparently predated the Muroc scenario said by Nick Spark (American Aviation Historical Society Journal 48 (2003) p. 169) to have occurred in or after June, 1949.

The name "Murphy's law" was not immediately secure. A story by Lee Correy in the February 1955 issue of Astounding Science Fiction referred to "Reilly's Law," which "states that in any scientific or engineering endeavor, anything that can go wrong will go wrong". Atomic Energy Commission Chairman Lewis Strauss was quoted in the Chicago Daily Tribune on February 12, 1955, saying "I hope it will be known as Strauss' law. It could be stated about like this: If anything bad can happen, it probably will."

Arthur Bloch, in his 1977 book "Murphy's Law, and Other Reasons Why Things Go WRONG", prints a letter that he received from George E. Nichols who recalls the event that occurred in 1949 at Edwards Air Force Base, Muroc, California that, according to him, is the origination of Murphy's Law. An excerpt from the letter reads:

...The Law's namesake was Capt. Ed Murphy, a development engineer from Wright Field Aircraft Lab. Frustration with a strap transducer which was malfunctioning due to an error in wiring the strain gage bridges caused him to remark - "If there is any way to do it wrong, he will" - referring to the technician who had wired the bridges at the Lab. I assigned Murphy's Law to the statement and the associated variations.

Association with Murphy

According to the book A History of Murphy's Law by author Nick T. Spark, differing recollections years later by various participants make it impossible to pinpoint who first coined the saying Murphy's law. The law's name supposedly stems from an attempt to use new measurement devices developed by the eponymous Edward Murphy. The phrase was coined in adverse reaction to something Murphy said when his devices failed to perform and was eventually cast into its present form prior to a press conference some months later — the first ever (of many) conferences given by Colonel John Stapp, a physician, U.S. Air Force colonel and Flight Surgeon in the 1950s. These conflicts (a long running interpersonal feud) were unreported until Spark researched the matter. His book expands upon and documents an original four part article published in 2003 (Annals of Improbable Research (AIR)) on the controversy: Why Everything You Know About Murphy's Law is Wrong.

From 1948 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 Dr. 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 backwards. 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 Stapp 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."

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 counter them. Thus Stapp's usage and Murphy's alleged usage are very different in outlook and attitude. One is sour, the other an affirmation of the predictable being surmountable, usually by sufficient planning and redundancy. Hill and Nichols 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.

The association with the 1948 incident is by no means secure. Despite extensive research, no trace of documentation of the saying as Murphy's law has been found before 1952 (see above). The next citations are not found until 1955, when the May–June issue of Aviation Mechanics Bulletin included the line "Murphy's Law: If an aircraft part can be installed incorrectly, someone will install it that way," and Lloyd Mallan's book, Men, Rockets and Space Rats, referred to: "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 Mercury astronauts in 1962 attributed Murphy's law to U.S. Navy training films.

Other variations on Murphy's law

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.

Although often equated with Sod's law (chiefly British), Murphy's law can be seen as a special case of this more general tenet, which holds that the most inconvenient turn of events is the most likely.

Murphy's law is sometimes strengthened, as Finagle's law. The comparative of Murphy's law then is: If anything can go even worse, it will go even worse. Or more comprehensive, as: "Whatever can go wrong will go wrong, and at the worst possible time, in the worst possible way." This was more memorably put by Malcolm Tucker as Tucker's Law "If some cunt can fuck something up, that cunt will pick the worst possible time to fucking fuck it up cause that cunt's a cunt."

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 and other reasons why things go wrong and Murphy's Law Book Two, which are very general, and the more specific volumes Murphy's Law: Doctors: Malpractice Makes Perfect and Murphy's Law: Lawyers: Wronging the Rights in the Legal Profession!. Later, a collection of three volumes was also published. This led to a corollary Stores selling Volume I have not heard of Volume II; stores selling Volume II have run out of Volume I.

A lesser-known addendum to Murphy's Law is Flanagan's Precept, which categorically states that both Murphy and Finagle were incurable optimists. Sometimes stated as "nothing is that predictable", meaning that one cannot use the inevitability of Murphy's law to avoid its consequences. These perversions of Murphy's Law can be summed up in Silverman's Paradox: "If Murphy's Law can go wrong, it will."

Somewhat related to "Finagle's law" or "Sod's law" are demonstration-related aphorisms, wherein it is acknowledged that a demo will fail in front of the intended audience, and that anything untested should not be demonstrated because it will fail. Other corollaries:

Murphy's Law can be extended to say that If a series of events can go wrong, they will do so in the worst possible sequence.

There have been persistent references to Murphy's law associating it with the laws of thermodynamics right from the very beginning (see the quotation from Anne Roe's book above). In particular, Murphy's law is often cited as a form of the second law of thermodynamics (the law of entropy) because both are predicting a tendency to a more disorganised state.

Murphy's Law can also be considered to be a tongue-in-cheek restatement of the law of large numbers, which says that given a sufficiently long time, an event which is possible (has non-zero probability) will almost surely take place. In this case, emphasis is put on the possible bad occurrences.

At first glance, Murphy's law seems paradoxical because when you apply the law to itself, if the law can go wrong, it will. However, the statement of Murphy's law itself insists that that all things that can go wrong, will go wrong. Therefore Murphy's law already assumes that the premise of the supposed paradox is wrong.

See also

• Appeal to probability
• Hindsight bias
• Finagle's law
• Hanlon's razor
• List of eponymous laws
• Muphry's law
• Parkinson's law
• Precautionary principle
• Segal's law
• SNAFU
• Sod's law
• Unintended consequence

Further reading

• Nick T. Spark (2006-05-21). A History of Murphy's Law. Periscope Film. ISBN 0-9786388-9-1.
• Paul Dickson (1981-05-18). "Murphy's Law". The Official Rules. Arrow Books. pp. 128–137. ISBN 0-09-926490-0.
• Klipstein, D. L. (August 1967). "The Contributions of Edsel Murphy to the Understanding of the Behaviour of Inanimate Objects". EEE Magazine. 15.
• Matthews, R A J (1995). "Tumbling toast, Murphy's Law and the Fundamental Constants". European Journal of Physics. 16: 172–176. doi:10.1088/0143-0807/16/4/005. — Why toasted bread lands buttered-side-down.
  • Matthews received the Ig Nobel Prize for physics in 1996 for this work (see list).

External links

• A collection of humorous Murphy's Laws
• 1952 proverb citation
• 1955 term citation of phrase "Murphy's Law"
• Examples of the mathematical formula for Murphy's Law
• Murphy's Law entry in the Jargon File
• Murphy's Law of Combat
• Murphy's Laws Origin
• Reference to 1941 citation of the proverb
• The Annals of Improbable Research tracks down the origins of Murphy's law