King's Law

This is the observation that help from home is always at least 24 hours out of date. When instruments or software are broken, help from home is usually along the lines of

'Have you switched it on ?'
'It says on page 1 of the manual that you should check the fuse. Have you done that ?'
'It says on page 2 of the manual that you should check the voltage of the incoming power. Have you done that ?'

and generally asking you to do all the diagnostic checks that the manual lists, and a lot of other things besides, all of which you thought of for yourself and tried 24 hours previously. When you report that you've done all those, they say they can't think of anything else to suggest.

The corollary of King's Law is that if the expert on board can't fix it, help from outside is not likely to fix it either. (It's still worth trying in case you find an exception to the Law, but I don't recall coming across one.)

as described by Brian King of Southampton Oceanography Centre.

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