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Try "Making Software: What really works and why we believe it".

I'm about halfway thru reading it, some of the findings presented are that TDD studies either aren't very good or give inconclusive results; that a number of code complexity metrics don't predict bug rates any better than file size does; that bug rates are correlated with how well organizational structure matches code structure; and that competent PHP programmers do in fact exist.

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I have the book and have read several (though not all) of the papers. I didn't see anything worth exempting from what I wrote above. The state of the field is just very weak. Even the good researchers, like Lutz Prechelt, aren't producing anything that comes close to justifying changing one's mind based on evidence. (The PHP vs. Java article struck me as fluff; so many other variables come to mind so easily.) I'd be happy to be wrong. Counterexamples are welcome.

I did like the paper on code size very much. The principle that code size is the best measurement of complexity and a good predictor of error rates is probably the finding I'd name if I had to answer my own "name one that isn't folklore" question. At least that one has multiple studies behind it. Even so, most of them (that I've seen) aren't very good.

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