What? In this example, the problem is not Carl—he’s harmless, and Dave carries on with the cycle (of improving the design) as he should. Showing a situation where Carl’s sensationalist misstatement actually stops progress would likely also show that the problem isn’t Carl—it’s EITHER the people who listen to Carl and interfere with Alice, Bob, and Dave, OR it’s Alice and Dave for letting Carl discourage them rather than understanding Bob’s objection directly.
Your description implies that the problem is something else—that Carl is somehow preventing Dave from taking Bob’s analysis into consideration, but your example doesn’t show that, and I’m not sure how it’s intended to.
In the actual world, there’s LOTS of sensationalist bad reporting of failures (and of extremely minor successes, for that matter). And those people who are actually trying to build things mostly ignore it, in favor of more reasonable publication and discussion of the underlying experiments/failures/calculations.
What? In this example, the problem is not Carl—he’s harmless, and Dave carries on with the cycle (of improving the design) as he should. Showing a situation where Carl’s sensationalist misstatement actually stops progress would likely also show that the problem isn’t Carl—it’s EITHER the people who listen to Carl and interfere with Alice, Bob, and Dave, OR it’s Alice and Dave for letting Carl discourage them rather than understanding Bob’s objection directly.
Your description implies that the problem is something else—that Carl is somehow preventing Dave from taking Bob’s analysis into consideration, but your example doesn’t show that, and I’m not sure how it’s intended to.
In the actual world, there’s LOTS of sensationalist bad reporting of failures (and of extremely minor successes, for that matter). And those people who are actually trying to build things mostly ignore it, in favor of more reasonable publication and discussion of the underlying experiments/failures/calculations.