“A journey of a thousand miles starts with the first step”
The journey to find the grail of – understanding how knots work and how they focus failure in their substrates – has been started many times. Reviewing the records of those expeditions shows us some of the complexity of that world and also tends to show that none of the expeditions seem to take us any closer or pave a way towards that grail with perhaps one small exception captured by Dan in this quote:-
I have to totally agree with Dan’s criticism. Trials to date have shown that we must start with consensus on the EXACT form of the knots being subjected to testing. Without this agreement and understanding we will be starting from the same point as all the others and will have learnt nothing from them.
I am thinking that this level of consensus can only be achieved by sharing physical samples of test knots between members of a volunteer Peer Group. If a test is to run say eight replicates, then perhaps duplicate test pieces should be sent to each of four peer auditors who will verify that the knots have been tied to the provided diagram and dressed and set to their expectations. If any of the reviewers do not agree that the knots have been tied correctly, then the volunteer peer group will review the disagreement and arrive at a consensus before the test proceeds. Notes of the review process will need to be kept with the test results. Yes, this will slow the test process, but members of the Peer Group will all have confidence in exactly what knot was actually tested.
Of course, this all depends on the availability of enough volunteers to make up the Peer Group.
Anyone interested?