By analogy with Godwin's Law (or, to be pedantic, with the popularly cited but incorrect version of Godwin's Law):

In any exchange of wit, repartee or humour on the Internet, eventually someone will quote or paraphrase a Monty Python sketch. This means that they have lost.

At this point the wit has run out and the repartee ends. The Dead Parrot Sketch loses worst of all. But the Yorkshiremen and the Spanish Inquisition come close.


I have found references to three further "Herring's Laws" in circulation:

  • Moderately funny Somerset comedian Richard Herring lays claim on his site to the formulation "any tourist will always choose to stop in the exact spot that will cause the maximum amount of inconvenience for other pedestrians/commuters"1. I got mine in three years earlier, though, even if he does have the edge over me in that Herring is his real name (I think).
  • "Herring's Law of Cure" appears to be a commonplace in various "alternative" forms of pseudomedical bollockology. It states2 that
    1. Cure proceeds from the most important organs to the least important.
    2. From above downwards.
    3. From the inside to the outside.
    4. From the most recent illnesses to the oldest ones.
    And if you'll buy that, you'll buy anything. This is also sometimes referred to as Hering's Law, possibly by confusion with the opthalmological law below.
  • Web references to Herring's law of the movement of the eyeballs appear to be a misspelling of that formulated by Karl Ewald Konstantin Hering to the effect that the corresponding muscles of the two eyes are always equally innervated.

1. http://www.richardherring.com/warmingup/warmingup.php?id=697
2. http://www.thepeacefulplace.com/celltech/articles/TheNaturalHealingProcess.htm and many other locations on the net in a variety of forms.

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