[Gordon Rugg's] approach is built on the observation, noted as far back as the 1970s, that experts tend to cut to the chase. In their zeal to get to an answer, they make many little mistakes. (A recent study of work published in Nature and British Medical Journal, for example, found that 11 percent of papers had serious statistical errors.) Experts unknowingly fudge logic to square data with their hypotheses. Or they develop blind spots after years of working in isolation. They lose their ability to take a broader view. If all this is true, he says, think of how much big science is based on flawed intuition.
Imagine a series of coloured patches having as its first member a patch which is clearly red. As we move along the series, the shade of the patches gradually changes until we reach the last member, which is clearly orange. Suppose also that the change is so gradual that each patch is indistinguishable in shade from its neighbours. Now imagine that a normal English speaker is presented with each of these shades in sequence and asked to respond either "Yes" or "No" to the question "Is this a red patch?".[T]he point of putative reference to possible borderline objects may be alternatively expressed in terms of actual representations (e.g. pictures, descriptions) of relevant sorts. . . . Open texture hinges thus not on the hypothetical expansion of a term's given domain or its putative reference to possibles, but rather on the uncertainty with which its mention-denoting compounds apply to actual things.