I have devised a way to experimentally prove something that is purportedly impossible. I have high confidence in the primary method, which I will present last in my scientific paper.

In total, I will present three methods. They will be in order of increasing complexity.

The first, simplest experiment, really ought to fail. It’s just my way of saying that my initial solution is complex enough that, perhaps, there is a simpler way of achieving the same outcome.

The second method might work; I haven’t actually tested that one yet. My present uncertainty with this one is the fact that the base experiment is relatively common; I’m simply going to try a slight twist on it. Therefore, if this second method turns out to be a solution, it would really surprise me that no one else thought of it first.

Even though the first method really should fail, it is causing me great consternation. Since I expect it to fail, perhaps I am giving up on it too early? This is making me try more and more permutations, in hopes of proving in my own mind that it really isn’t possible.

The two reasons why the first method shouldn’t work is that, first, it is way too easy of a solution. Someone else really should’ve figured it out by now. And, second, I’ve seen it discussed as a potential solution in an arXiv paper.

In that paper, the author addresses the same problem that I’m working on, and presents this method as a potential solution. However, the author doesn’t put forth a sincere effort. The error rate, if performed as an actual experiment, would be unacceptably high.

The author’s conclusion is that the purportedly-impossible is theoretically-possible, so an underlying assumption must be wrong. That assumption is not identified, leaving the conclusion as theoretical success in search of failure. There is no attempt to provide experimental evidence, because the author presumes a faulty theoretical understanding.

It is the failure in that one paper, that addresses the same problem with the same method, and that projects a half-hearted high error rate, that has convinced me to expect failure.

But, did the author try every possible configuration? Only one is presented, and, I’ve already thought of and tried others. Notwithstanding they all failed, this hasn’t felt like an exhaustive approach.

Therefore, while I continue to work on the rest of the paper, I will continue to think of other ways to test this method. It should be enough just to conclude that it doesn’t work, but, for some reason, that’s just not satisfying.