M.H. Halstead's Software Science - a critical examination

Abstract

Karl Popper has described the scientific method as “the method of bold conjectures and ingenious and severe attempts to refute them”. Software Science has made “bold conjectures” in postulating specific relationships between various 'metrics' of software code and in ascribing psychological interpretations to some of these metrics.This paper describes tests made on the validity of the relationships and interpretations which form the foundations of Software Science. The results indicate that the majority of them represent neither natural laws nor useful engineering approximations.