[Book] **Evidence-based software engineering**
From the book itself:
*This book discusses what is currently known about software engineering based on an analysis of all publicly available software engineering data. This aim is not as ambitious as it sounds because there is not a lot of data publicly available.*
*The analysis is like a join-the-dots puzzle, except that the 600+ dots are not numbered,some of them are actually specs of dust, and many dots are likely to be missing. The wayforward is to join the dots to build an understanding of the processes involved in buildingand maintaining software systems; work is also needed to replicate some of the dots toconfirm that they are not specs of dust, and to discover missing dots.*
@digital_carver
You made me think carefully about it and you are totally right. It is in the very nature of how analyses work and how it should be, there is no shame on that.
@choutos
When you look into it, most analyses in most fields turn out to be what the second paragraph describes. They're just experienced enough to bury that fact under the rug. I appreciate these authors' naivete/idealism, and hope (but not really believe) such analyses in this field continue in this honest direction, without resorting to statistical and other standard trickery to get results.