What would have made us stop, written before the research started
Research otherwise ends when you get tired or when you find something you like. Eleven theories were opened, all eleven were attacked, and seven turned out to be wrong.
August 2026 · 2 min read
Investigations end for two reasons that have nothing to do with evidence. You get tired, or you find something you like.
Both feel like completion from the inside. Neither is.
So on a real engagement the stopping condition was written down before any of the work began: what would have to turn up for this line of enquiry to be finished, and what would have to turn up for it to be abandoned.
What came out of it
Eleven theories were opened about where an opportunity might be. All eleven were deliberately attacked, including the ones that already looked correct, because a claim is at its most dangerous precisely when nobody feels the need to check it.
Four survived. Seven were refuted, several of them after they had looked right for a while. One experiment returned a flat zero and was published as a flat zero.
The verdict went against the commercial outcome we wanted, and that is the version that was written up and delivered.