Editing Finagle's law

{{Short description|Adage}}
'''Finagle's law of dynamic negatives''' (also known as '''Melody's law''', '''Sod's Law''' or '''Finagle's corollary to Murphy's law''') is usually rendered as "Anything that can go wrong, will&mdash;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]]'' (later ''Analog'').

==Variants==
One variant (known as O'Toole's corollary of Finagle's law) favored among [[Hacker (programmer subculture)|hackers]] is a takeoff on the [[second law of thermodynamics]] (related to the augmentation of [[entropy]]):
{{Blockquote|The perversity of the Universe tends towards a maximum.}}

In the ''[[Star Trek: The Original Series|Star Trek]]'' episode "[[Amok Time]]" (written by [[Theodore Sturgeon]] in 1967), 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 [[Known Space|several stories]] (for example, ''[[w:Protector (novel)|Protector]]'' [Ballantine Books paperback edition, 4th printing, p.&nbsp;23]), depicting a frontier culture of asteroid miners; this "[[Belter (Niven)|Belter]]" culture professed a [[parody religion|religion]] or [[running gag|running joke]] involving the worship of the dread god Finagle and his mad prophet Murphy.<ref>{{cite web | url=http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/F/Finagles-Law.html | title=Finagle's Law | access-date=2009-05-01}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=Finagle's Law |url=https://www.definitions.net/definition/finagle%27s+law |website=Definitions.net |publisher=Stands4 LLC |access-date=11 June 2019}}</ref>

"Finagle's law" can also be the related belief "Inanimate objects are out to get us", also known as [[Resistentialism]].<ref>{{cite book | last = Moore | first = Omar K. |author2=Anderson, Alan R. | year = 1962 | title = Mathematical Methods in Small Group Processes | chapter = Some Puzzling Aspects of Social Interactions | publisher = Stanford University Press |editor= Criswell, Joan |editor2=Solomon, Herbert |editor3=Suppes, Patrick | page = 235 | isbn = 0-8047-0116-4 | chapter-url = https://books.google.com/books?id=RjCsAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA235 | access-date = 2009-05-23}}</ref><ref>{{cite book | last = Ritter | first = Lawrence S. |author2=Silber, William L. | year = 1977 | edition = 2nd | title = Principles of Money, Banking, and Financial Markets | publisher = Basic Books | page = 460 | isbn = 0-465-06337-3}}</ref>
Similar to Finagle's law is the verbless phrase of the German novelist [[Friedrich Theodor Vischer]]: "{{Lang|de|die Tücke des Objekts}}" (the perfidy of inanimate objects).

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" <ref>{{cite web | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=bkriAAAAMAAJ&pg=RA30-PA31 | title=The Michigan Technic | year=1962 | page = 30 | access-date = 2019-09-08}}</ref>

The term is also used in a 1960 wildlife management article.<ref>{{cite web | url = https://www.jstor.org/stable/3796740 | title= WEBB, W L. 1960. Forest wildlife management in Germany. Journal of Wildlife Management, p. 152| jstor= 3796740}}</ref>

Arthur Bloch, in his book "Murphy's Law and Other Reasons Why Things Go Wrong" (1977) stated variations on this:<ref>{{cite web | url = https://motleybytes.com/w/Arthur_Bloch_quotes | title= Arthur Bloch quotes | access-date = 2025-02-14}}</ref>
*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 (a) misinterpret it, (b) fake it, (c) 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.
::Corollaries:  1. No one whom you ask for help will see it.  2. Everyone who stops by with unsought advice will see it immediately.”
*Finagle's Fourth Law:  “Once a job is fouled up, anything done to improve it only makes it worse.”

==See also==
*[[Hanlon's razor]]
*[[Hofstadter's law]]
*[[List of eponymous laws]]
*[[Murphy's law]]
*[[Resistentialism]]
*[[Sod's law]]
*[[Sturgeon's law]]

==References==
<references />

==External links==
{{Spoken Wikipedia|Finagle's_law.ogg|date=2019-10-25}}

[[Category:Adages]]