Also, keep in mind that the only was an experiment can fail is if it provides no new information; the only way to render an experiment invalid or less useful is to show that you don't know as much more as you thought you did.
But I thought you were referring to the modification of the two-slit experiment where electrons were the wave being measured, not photons.
And an experiment can't fail to provide new information, because you thought it would provide information and then it didn't, which means it has something to teach you about experiment design. Unless you're proposing that an experiment that goes exactly as expected is a waste of time?
That said I think what Wilde means by 'invalid' is that a strong conclusion that resulted from the experiment is invalid in light of the fact that an entirely different model is consistent with the evidence.
Today's post, Tolerate Tolerance was originally published on 21 March 2009. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):
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This post is part of the Rerunning the Sequences series, where we'll be going through Eliezer Yudkowsky's old posts in order so that people who are interested can (re-)read and discuss them. The previous post was Why Our Kind Can't Cooperate, and you can use the sequence_reruns tag or rss feed to follow the rest of the series.
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