O-12 - Measured error rates in published scientific arguments and calculations are of order 1e-3 or higher
Compiled empirical error-rate figures the paper assembles from the literature (not its own data collection):
quantity value cited source raw MEDLINE retraction rate 6.3e-5 Cokol, Iossifov et al. 2007 modeled retraction rate under top-tier scrutiny 1e-3 – 1e-2 Cokol, Iossifov et al. 2007 flawed statistical results in Nature/BMJ sample ~11% García-Berthou & Alcaraz 2004 hospital drug-dose error rate ~1–2% of administrations Prot 2005; Stubbs 2006; Walsh 2008 spreadsheet audits with errors ~88% Panko 1998 The paper notes retraction is only triggered by nontrivial, immediately noticeable flaws, so the retraction rate lower-bounds the serious-flaw rate; 62% of 1982-2002 retractions were unintentional error rather than misconduct (Nath et al. 2006).
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Why this is evidence
H-11 treats the LHC safety case as an ordinary member of the reference class of checked professional scientific work, so it predicts exactly this: substantial measured flaw rates across retractions, published statistics, and high-stakes technical calculation. H-46 claims the safety arguments beat that reference class by a wide margin; worlds where argument classes of this kind are as robust as H-46 needs are worlds where audits of comparable peer-reviewed and safety-critical work would tend to turn up far fewer serious flaws than are in fact observed.