Fallibility

Fehl-. false, wrong, bad, vain, mis-, mal-. -an-weisung,/. wrong indication, misreading, fehlbar, a. fallible. 

One very useful, although fallible, generality is that in a series of solvents the extremes of selectivity will be found at the extremes of the dielectric constant with two provisos (a) alcohols sometimes should be considered separately. 

My sincere, humble apologies to all those that belong on this short list, but cannot find their name so listed. Know that your absence from these acknowledgments conveys no other conscious message other than the obvious evidence it provides of the author s fallible memory. 

Finally, of paramount importance for the proper interpretation of laboratory observations is the knowledge of the relevant theory. Hodson (1986) maintained that observations are theory-dependent and therefore fallible and biased. Even scientists themselves hold preconceptions and biases about the way the world operates, and these affect their ability to make observations ( theory-laden observations ). According to Johnstone and Al-Shuaili (2001, p. 47) investigation is very knowledge dependent and cannot take place in a knowledge vacuum. As a result, students who lack the requisite theoretical framework will not know where to look, or how to look, in order to make observations appropriate to the task in hand, or how to interpret what they see (p. 44). 

There are also differences in categorical classification methods. Prototypic classification is a method that suggests the indicators for inclusion and exclusion from a category are fallible rather than perfect. In a psychiatric classification system, the patient s assignment to a category is based on the similarity of that patient to the most typical patient for that disor-... 

Unfortunately, indicators of the taxon are fallible thus, parameters that are used to calculate taxon membership probabilities will not be estimated perfectly. Hence, any group assignment will be only an approximation of the true membership. We can use this imperfect group assignment to improve the indicators and use them to do a more accurate group assignment. 

Meehl, P. E. (1965). Detecting latent clinical taxa by fallible quantitative indicators lacking an accepted criterion (Rep. No. PR-65-2). Minneapolis University of Minnesota, Research Laboratories of the Department of Psychiatry. 

Gilovich, Thomas. How We Know What Isn t So, The Fallibility of Human Reason in Everyday Life. New York Macmillian, 1991. 

F2. Fogelman, A. M., La Mont, J. T., Finkelstein, S., Rado, E., and Pearce, M. L., Fallibility of plasma-digoxin in differentiating toxic from non-toxic patients. Lancet ii, 727-729 (1971). 

One problem this argument has to face is uncertainty and human fallibility, which is a feature of human deliberation and, in this particular case, is reinforced because of the nature of the research itself. There are no certainties in the results that might be obtained. Although this is common to all research work, it is a problem when more than minimal risks are imposed on persons. However, we have to concede that this is not a knockdown argument. It affects all research endeavors. 

For example, students develop an elementary understanding of bonding from the Lewis model. Then they refine it through the valence bond model and finally molecular orbital theory. Some exercises challenge students to refine models further—and to develop new ones. Students will see how current chemical knowledge is based on the authority—and the fallibility—of modern experimental techniques. 

Note that with highly complex networked systems (i) there are likely to be uncertainties and arguments about system boundaries, (ii) the very complexity of the system (and its specification, if it has one) can be a major problem, (iii) judgments as to possible causes or consequences of failure can be subtle and disputable and (iv) any provisions for preventing faults from causing failures are themselves almost certainly fallible. 

Alexander, M. (1965). Biodegradation Problems of molecular recalcitrance and microbial falliblity. Adv. Appl. Micro. 7, 35-92. 

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