They arrived in the morning, bright and early. The dishwasher had been acting strangely, so I had finally called in the engineers to figure out what was going on. I like to fix these things myself around the house, but this time, after fiddling in vain for a few days, I had given up.
“‘morning, Sir – how can we help?” Doug, the senior of the duo, had the reassuring air of the expert who has seen it all.
“Well, this is what’s happening” I started, hopeful but sceptical that Doug would immediately find an obvious explanation. “The washing cycle does not end properly. As you can see, it stops in the middle, with water still lying at the bottom. It’s not the filter or anything like that” I added, making it clear that I knew my stuff. “Sometimes, after I open and close the door a couple of times, it restarts and goes on to the end. But other times, like today, it just stops”.
“Let’s take a look” said Doug, and with a nod and a whisper instructed his younger mate Trevor to check under the sink. At this point I left, one because the children had woken up and two because watching Trevor puffing and laying his giant tattooed belly on the cold marble floor was a bit too much so early in the morning. “Call me if you need me” I said. But I had hardly greeted the kids that Doug called me back. “Here it is, Sir” – the dishwasher was working again. “It was the connection to the water drain. It is shared with the washing machine and sometimes it can be a bit too much, you know. Anyway, we’ve changed it around and it should not happen again. But remember never to use the dishwasher and the washing machine at the same time”.
“Ow…kay” I said, trying to conceal my puzzlement and following Doug’s invitation to look under the sink at the result of Trevor’s manipulation. I couldn’t see any difference – and I had never used the two machines simultaneously. “Are you sure?” I wanted to ask, but I refrained – Doug looked very sure, and ready to leave. “Thank you very much” was all I could say. “Pleasure, Sir” said Doug, “it should be alright but we’re here if you need us. Have a good day”.
Alas, the little hope I had for a quick solution soon faded away. The dishwasher finished the cycle that Doug and Trevor had managed to restart, but the next one flopped again in the middle, as I found out the following morning. A little door banging helped it to the end, and so it did in next few days. But the whole process soon became increasingly irritating: sometimes everything worked fine, sometimes the machine stopped and restarted by itself as I entered the kitchen, and some other times I had to keep banging the door. A week later I called back.
“Sorry guys” I apologised on the phone as I explained that their fixing wasn’t working. “No worries, Sir. We’ll be there tomorrow early in the morning”. So that evening I started a new cycle, with the intent of showing them the result in the morning and creating the ideal conditions for a new assessment.
I got out of bed as they rang the bell. They came in and we walked to the kitchen. One, two, three: I opened the dishwasher door, ready to show them the usual stagnant pool of water. Et voilà: no water. This time the cycle had ended properly. “No problem at all, Sir” said Doug, helping to alleviate my evident embarrassment. “We’ll put it down as ‘Intermittent Malfunctioning'”.
As they left with what I couldn’t help interpreting as a wry smile of amusement, I started contemplating my life with an erratically faulty dishwasher. Sure enough, the stop and go resumed. But what was the point of calling them again? So I kept going for a while, banging and cursing. Until one day it all came to an end. No banging, no lights, nothing. The machine was completely dead, and an increasingly smelly sludge at the bottom left me no alternative to calling Doug once again, with a view to arranging for a replacement.
This time Doug came alone, and after a few fearful moments in which I was dreading a new mysterious restart, he declared death himself. He took away the wooden bar under the dishwasher and started fiddling with its feet, exploring ways to slide it out of its casing. I left him again, and again he soon called me back. “Here, Sir” – the dishwasher had come back to life. To my befuddlement and consternation, Doug offered a new explanation: “You see, Sir, it all has to do with the alignment of the feet. They have laid the machine on MDF – that’s not the correct way, they should have used a harder material. With time, the feet have sunk a bit into the wood, enough to misalign the door closing. That’s why banging works sometimes. I have now raised the feet a bit so it’s all back in line. If this doesn’t work, the next thing is to replace the door, but I will not do it myself – I tried it once, but the hinges snapped back and I almost lost my finger. Anyway, I don’t think it will be necessary. I believe I figured it out – it’s amazing how one keeps learning after all these years”.
Oh well. I didn’t know what to make of Doug’s new theory, but he had managed to raise my hopes a bit. Once again, I would have the evidence in the morning. But later in the day I received a phone call. It was an electrician, who explained that he had been instructed by Doug to look at the dishwasher’s plug and asked whether he could come in the afternoon for a check. I was confused – Doug had said nothing to me about the plug. But why not? The whole thing was starting to reveal an amusing side.
As the young electrician came in, I gave him an abridged version of the saga. He nodded, quite uninterested, and set out to slide out the dishwasher to reach for the plug, which he had figured out was right behind it. After a few minutes he called me back. “Here, have a look” he said, with a quiet smile. The plug was stuck to the rear of the dishwasher, its plastic back partially melted and fused into it:
The mystery was finally and completely solved. And, as in the best detective stories, the explanation was simple and totally unexpected. The plug, stuck to the back, would intermittently lose contact with the socket due to the dishwasher’s vibration in mid cycle. That’s why door banging helped – it restored contact, as sometimes did just walking back into the kitchen, as floor vibration was enough to produce the same effect. All the electrician had to do was to move the socket to the side panel and reinsert the plug there. A dishwasher that was about to be chucked away is now in perfect shape and flawlessly performing its wonders.
So much for Doug’s theories. He had first tried a routine explanation – one that would probably fit most similar cases – but received disconfirming evidence from me. He then got confirming evidence from his own observation – a treacherous occurrence in many circumstances. Then, when a new piece of disconfirming evidence arrived, he built a new theory around it that seemed to fit the facts. This was as wrong as the first – and even more so, as it lacked generality and was created on the spot.
To his credit, however, Doug was crucial to finding the truth. I don’t know why he didn’t tell me about the plug – maybe it was late lateral thinking, or maybe he had it in mind but didn’t want to spoil his new-fangled theory – or simply, with no Trevor around, he didn’t feel like going through the motions of sliding the machine out.
Be that as it may, Doug was a true scientist. The search for the truth proceeds neither by deduction nor by induction but – in Charles Sanders Peirce’s somewhat awkward phrasing – abduction. We test hypotheses to produce explanations and select those that provide the best explanation of the observed evidence. The key to the process is to be open to revising and possibly rejecting any explanation in the light of the observed evidence. But a true scientist goes further: he actively looks for evidence that would reject his best theory and only stops when he finds conclusive evidence. In our dishwasher tale – a true story – the fused plastic plug was a Smoking Gun: evidence that conclusively explained the dishwasher’s strange behaviour. Hence we say it was the cause of such behaviour. I sent the picture to Doug’s phone but got no reply – I can’t remember, but perhaps, unlike his owner, the phone is not a smart one.
