A Note on the XIX IMEKO World Congress Fundamental and Applied Metrology

Abstract

This paper is a continuation of the article “A Critical Note on the Guide to the Expression of Uncertainty in Measurement (GUM)” published in Economic Quality Control 23. Unfortunately, the critique expressed on the GUM in that paper has so far been ignored by the metrology community. This paper shall illustrate and discuss the flawed use of statistical terms and methods in metrology. The GUM was published more than a decade ago, and undergoes presently a revision. Therefore, it is to be hoped that the here discussed weak points might be avoided in a new version of the GUM.

The IMEKO is a very important organization. On the IMEKO homepage one can read the following words: International Measurement confederation, IMEKO is a non-governmental federation of 39 Member Organizations individually concerned with the advancement of measurement technology. Its fundamental objectives are the promotion of international interchange of scientific and technical information in the field of measurement and instrumentation and the enhancement of international co-operation among scientists and engineers from research and industry. Founded in 1958, the Confederation has consultative status with UNESCO and UNIDO and is one of the five Sister Federations within FIACC: Five International Associations Co-ordinating Committee, further consisting of

• IFAC- International Federation of Automatic Control,

• IFIP - International Federation for Information Processing,

• IFORS - International Federation of Operational Research Societies and

• IMACS - International Association for Mathematics and Computers in Simulation.

In September 2009, the IMEKO World Congress was organized in Lisbon, and the latest “scientific results” were exchanged by the leading metrologists. In this paper some of these results shall be examined and evaluated.