SYSE.10:6 - Bias Annotation

Sources such as official verification procedures, software test automation, peer-reviewed papers, sophisticated models, and AI benchmarks can contribute useful Methods or results. Their prestige, publication, conformance label, mathematical form, or benchmark score does not establish a universal evidence order or the project’s effectiveness.

Across physical, cyber-physical, biological, and social-system cases, the relied-on evidence may depend on configuration, calibration, integration, environment, use, or affected-System consequences that a software test or simulation does not cover. Failed trials and actual project practice can matter more than published positive cases.

Demanding definitive proof can be as harmful as overclaiming when no affordable study can settle the choice. Use the best current assessment, state its epistemic status, make the decision reversible where possible, and name the observations that would reopen it.