Rigor When the Physics Is Not Settled

Where the science is genuinely open, rigor means stating the uncertainty precisely, not manufacturing false confidence or false despair.

Rigor does not require certainty

Some of the physics we depend on is not settled, and rigor does not mean pretending otherwise. It means characterizing what we do not know as carefully as what we do: bounding the uncertainty, framing the open question sharply, and refusing both false confidence and false despair. An honest 'we do not yet know, and here is how much' is a rigorous statement.

Two failure modes to avoid

Overconfidence collapses a genuine range to a flattering point value and hides the risk. Overcaution inflates uncertainty until no decision can be made and every number is drowned in caveats. Both are failures of rigor. The discipline is to state the uncertainty as it actually is -- no smaller, no larger -- and let it be that size.

Our open questions, framed not hidden

The clearest examples are our own. Tritium self-sufficiency is genuinely open, which is why the breeding ratio is carried as a lever across 1.1, 1.5, and 1.8 rather than asserted. The burner plug regime sits 166-830x beyond any operated device, so its integrated performance is un-post-dictable today. These are stated as sharp open questions with quantified distance from settled ground, which is what rigor under uncertainty looks like.

Framing an open question well is itself a contribution. A precisely stated uncertainty tells everyone -- including future experiments and outside reviewers -- exactly what a measurement would resolve, which is more useful than a confident number that was never entitled to its confidence.