Crabtree's Bludgeon

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Crabtree's Bludgeon is a foil to Occam's Razor, and may be expressed so:

"No set of mutually inconsistent observations can exist for which some human intellect cannot conceive a coherent explanation, however complicated."

Its origin is obscure, but appears to be associated with R. V. Jones and may appear in the Crabtree Orations, a set of satirical academic commentaries attributed to the fictitious poet, Joseph Crabtree. Crabtree was originally a creation of Sir James Sutherland, and was later maintained by the Crabtree Foundation.

[edit] See also

• Underdetermination
• Ad hoc hypothesis
• Cognitive bias

[edit] References:

Moshe Barasch (Bryan Bennett and Negley Harte, editors) (1997); The Crabtree Orations 1954-1994, Taylor & Francis Books Ltd, ISBN 0-9529987-0-X