Editing Murphy's law (section)

==== Disputed origins ====
The association with the Muroc incident is by no means secure. Despite extensive research, no trace of documentation of the saying as "Murphy's law" has been found before 1951. The next citations are not found until 1955, when the May–June issue of ''Aviation Mechanics Bulletin'' included the line "Murphy's law: If an aircraft part can be installed incorrectly, someone will install it that way",<ref name="Shapiro529">Shapiro, Fred R., ed., ''[[The Yale Book of Quotations]]'' 529 (2006).</ref> and Lloyd Mallan's book ''Men, Rockets and Space Rats'', referred to: "Colonel Stapp's favorite takeoff on sober scientific laws—Murphy's law, Stapp calls it—'Everything that can possibly go wrong will go wrong'." In 1962, the [[Mercury Seven]] attributed Murphy's law to [[United States Navy]] [[training film]]s.<ref name="Shapiro529" />

[[Fred R. Shapiro]], the editor of the ''[[Yale Book of Quotations]]'', has shown that in 1952 the adage was called "Murphy's law" in a book by [[Anne Roe]], quoting an unnamed physicist:

<blockquote>he described [it] as "Murphy's law or the fourth law of thermodynamics" <!-- This is part of the quotation – do not modify -->(actually there were only three last I heard)<!-- This is part of the quotation – do not modify --> which states: "If anything can go wrong, it will."<ref name=Roe>{{cite web |url=http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0712C&L=ADS-L&P=R3767&I=-3 |title=Roe, Anne, ''The Making of a Scientist'' 46–47 (1952, 1953) |publisher=Linguist List |access-date=2012-04-19 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080312051506/http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0712C&L=ADS-L&P=R3767&I=-3 |archive-date=2008-03-12 |url-status=dead }}</ref>
</blockquote>

In May 1951, Anne Roe gave a transcript of an interview (part of a [[thematic apperception test]], asking impressions on a drawing) with said physicist: "As for himself he realized that this was the inexorable working of the second law of the thermodynamics which stated Murphy's law 'If anything can go wrong it will'. I always liked 'Murphy's law'. I was told that by an architect."<ref>''Genetic Psychology Monographs'' volume 43, p. 204</ref> ADS member Stephen Goranson, investigating this in 2008 and 2009, found that Anne Roe's papers, held in the [[American Philosophical Society]]'s archives in [[Philadelphia]], identified the interviewed physicist as Howard Percy "Bob" Robertson (1903–1961). Robertson's papers at the [[Caltech]] archives include a letter in which Robertson offers Roe an interview within the first three months of 1949, making this apparently predate the Muroc incident said to have occurred in or after June 1949.<ref name="spark"/>{{Unreliable source?|date=August 2023}}

John Paul Stapp, Edward A. Murphy, Jr., and George Nichols were jointly awarded an [[Ig Nobel Prize]] in 2003 in engineering " for (probably) giving birth to the name".<ref>{{Cite web |date=2006-08-01 |title=Past Ig Winners |url=https://improbable.com/ig/winners/ |access-date=2024-08-12 |website=improbable.com |language=en-US}}</ref> Murphy's Law was also the theme of 2024 Ig Nobel Prize ceremony.<ref>{{Cite web |date=2024-07-07 |title=The 34th First Annual Ig Nobel Ceremony |url=https://improbable.com/ig/archive/2024-ceremony/ |access-date=2024-08-12 |website=improbable.com |language=en-US}}</ref>