I love the term "superstition". I like to refer to lab "rituals" - if something works, repeat it, and never change things around "because it ought to work just as well". Life is too short to figure out all the unknown variables that might be affecting things, so seize luck when you find it.
I’ve been referring to this kind of belief as a ‘pigeon religion.’ This one time an operator has a problem (it’s an e-stop that hasn’t been reset) and they ‘fixed it’ by switching the system into test mode and back, then pressing the e-stop reset three times. So they tell all their friends.
Next time that doesn’t work (the e-stop button is still pressed in) but someone tries switching the system into test mode and back twice, slamming the control cabinet door, pressing and releasing the e-stop button three times, then pressing the e-stop reset button three times. They report their findings on the new standard procedure…
I caught a friend's mother going through a ritual like this with the dishwasher. She had to press the heat mode or something on the dishwasher four times in a row before starting it (so it toggled it on and off twice). Who knows how this got started, but she was adamant that it had to be done before starting it.
Having a protocol for working with a black box is fine. The problem is how bad a lot of people are at differentiating between superstition, a black box, and a process with a well understood mechanism.
