PHY.10:4.5 - Obtain the result and locate the failed premise

Work the proposed preparation through to the predicted indication before committing the apparatus. This can expose an uninformative design or missing physical contribution without a new experiment.

When observations are obtained, interpret them under the stated recording and physical conditions. A response compatible with one supplied account and incompatible with another narrows this comparison. It does not exclude physical accounts that were never represented in the alternative set.

If the result disagrees with both, inspect the consequential premise rather than forcing a winner. Separate a computational error, an incorrect readout relation, an unachieved preparation and a defeated physical account. Follow the dependence of the failed prediction to identify a useful return. A supplied bound on an apparatus effect can sometimes exclude that explanation; when it cannot, retain the competing interpretations.

An agreement can also reveal a design limit. Determine whether the test retained the distinction it was meant to expose. If both accounts predict the observed outcome within the relevant uncertainty, report that limited result and preserve any unaffected consequence.

Reuse a result for the preparation, response range and question it supports. A successful test of a small-signal account does not determine its response after a regime-changing drive.