The Truth, The Whole Truth, and Nothing But the Truth: A Pragmatic Guide to Assessing Empirical Evaluations

• Published in: ACM transactions on programming languages and systems 2016-10, Vol.38 (4), p.1-20, Article 15
• Main Authors: Blackburn, Stephen M., Diwan, Amer, Hauswirth, Matthias, Sweeney, Peter F., Amaral, José Nelson, Brecht, Tim, Bulej, Lubomír, Click, Cliff, Eeckhout, Lieven, Fischmeister, Sebastian, Frampton, Daniel, Hendren, Laurie J., Hind, Michael, Hosking, Antony L., Jones, Richard E., Kalibera, Tomas, Keynes, Nathan, Nystrom, Nathaniel, Zeller, Andreas
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Abandonment; Communities; Computer systems organization; Cross-computing tools and techniques; Dependable and fault-tolerant systems and networks; Exposure; General and reference; Integrity; Lead (metal); Network performance evaluation; Networks; Programming languages; Reasoning; Sound
• ISSN: 0164-0925; 1558-4593
• DOI: 10.1145/2983574

An unsound claim can misdirect a field, encouraging the pursuit of unworthy ideas and the abandonment of promising ideas. An inadequate description of a claim can make it difficult to reason about the claim, for example, to determine whether the claim is sound. Many practitioners will acknowledge the threat of unsound claims or inadequate descriptions of claims to their field. We believe that this situation is exacerbated, and even encouraged, by the lack of a systematic approach to exploring, exposing, and addressing the source of unsound claims and poor exposition. This article proposes a framework that identifies three sins of reasoning that lead to unsound claims and two sins of exposition that lead to poorly described claims and evaluations. Sins of exposition obfuscate the objective of determining whether or not a claim is sound, while sins of reasoning lead directly to unsound claims. Our framework provides practitioners with a principled way of critiquing the integrity of their own work and the work of others. We hope that this will help individuals conduct better science and encourage a cultural shift in our research community to identify and promulgate sound claims.