Ever heard of a faulty design?
Numbers by themselves mean nothing unless they correspond to reality, just as letters by themselves mean nothing.
Theories are verified against reality, not the other way around.
The error with the the HST wasn't a faulty design on paper but a faulty "yardstick," so to say, used for verification. The numbers looked right, but what was measured as a "yard" wasn't really a "yard" but slightly less.
In other cases the numbers are out together incorrectly and the resulting figures are flawed. In either case, the problem is trusting the numbers and confusing them with reality. The only tru test for a given working model is qualitative and not quantitative.
Trouble is: the engineers believed that because the numbers looked right they had to be right. The HST was never tested against an actual star image (such a test was deemed prohibitively costly for an already budget-busting project). The numbers were deemed "right" and believed true and the star test was deemed unnecessary.
Which brings me back to my earlier argument that just because you believe (in) something doesn't mean it's true. Faith is no guarantee. Faith is not a verification of reality. At best it is hope, or no more than a guess.
Later.
Right.
Which . . . affirms . . . imho . . . what some of us have been saying . . .
even the ostensibly most rigorous
‘objectivist’
treatment of ‘reality’
is going to be chronically flawed, more or less regardless.