The thing about "many good ideas and rules of thumb" is, I've got a few dozen of those of my own! Most of us do. It would be interesting if there were decisive evidence against any of them, but even when I read studies whose conclusions contradict my beliefs, the studies are so flimsy that I find it easy to keep my beliefs.
There does seem to be a recent wave of software engineering literature, exemplified by http://www.amazon.com/Making-Software-Really-Works-Believe/d... (which I haven't read). Are you familiar with this more recent stuff? Does it represent new research or merely new reporting on old research? If the former, are the standards higher?
I haven't read all of Making Software yet myself, but you would be interested in one of the first few chapters. I don't remember who wrote it offhand, but as I recall, in discussing the standards of evidence needed for software engineering the author concluded, and I am paraphrasing here, that hard numbers were difficult to get and came with many, many conditions; as a result anecdotes were likely the best you could do and were perfectly acceptable. (Was that enough disclaimers?)
You might be able to tell why I lost my enthusiasm for the book.
Thanks. My enthusiasm mostly consists of trying to get other people to read this stuff and tell me what it says :)
I think that's the argument for junking the SE literature. If it can't do any better than anecdote, well, to quote Monty Python, we've already got some they're very nice.
There does seem to be a recent wave of software engineering literature, exemplified by http://www.amazon.com/Making-Software-Really-Works-Believe/d... (which I haven't read). Are you familiar with this more recent stuff? Does it represent new research or merely new reporting on old research? If the former, are the standards higher?