ABSTRACT
The original DOD objective which the process of Verification, Validation, and Accreditation exists to serve was to evaluate the credibility of models and simulations. The red-line between verification (following the blueprint correctly) and validity (accuracy for a particular domain) was convenient, but suppressed consideration of flaws in design concepts. Protocols for evaluating models in domains where theory or data is not unchallenged, e.g. social science, requires clarifying the meaning of verification as “construct validity” and developing a model of verification and validation which situates these operations across multiple levels of an epistemological hierarchy. Pathologies of either inference or generalizability can present themselves at any level and be inherited by others.
