Finagle's law


Finagle's law of dynamic negatives is usually rendered as "Anything that can go wrong, will—at the worst possible moment."
The term "Finagle's law" is often associated with John W. Campbell Jr., the influential editor of Astounding Science Fiction.

Variants

One variant favored among hackers is a takeoff on the second law of thermodynamics :
In the Star Trek episode "Amok Time", Captain Kirk tells Spock, "As one of Finagle's laws puts it: 'Any home port the ship makes will be somebody else's, not mine.
The term "Finagle's law" was popularized by science fiction author Larry Niven in several stories, depicting a frontier culture of asteroid miners; this "Belter" culture professed a religion or running joke involving the worship of the dread god Finagle and his mad prophet Murphy.
"Finagle's law" can also be the related belief "Inanimate objects are out to get us", also known as Resistentialism.
Similar to Finagle's law is the verbless phrase of the German novelist Friedrich Theodor Vischer: "die Tücke des Objekts".
A related concept, the "Finagle factor", is an ad hoc multiplicative or additive term in an equation, which can be justified only by the fact that it gives more correct results. Also known as Finagle's variable constant, it is sometimes defined as the correct answer divided by your answer.
One of the first records of "Finagle factor" is probably a December 1962 article in The Michigan Technic, credited to Campbell, but bylined "I Finaglin"
The term is also used in a 1960 wildlife management article.
Arthur Bloch, in his book "Murphy's Law and Other Reasons Why Things Go Wrong" stated variations on this:
  • Finagle's First Law: “If an experiment works, something has gone wrong.”
  • Finagle's Second Law: “No matter what the anticipated result, there will always be someone eager to misinterpret it, fake it, believe it happened to his own pet theory.”
  • Finagle's Third Law: “In any collection of data, the figure most obviously correct, beyond all need of checking, is the mistake.
  • Finagle's Fourth Law: “Once a job is fouled up, anything done to improve it only makes it worse.”