Aerospace engineering practice includes a heuristic method called “Substantiation by Similarity” that Chris Carlin (Boeing, ret.) introduced into theoretic AWE discussion.
Whenever a “similarity case” is invoked, like the review of industrial anchor-belay cases as instructive to AWE, this is what is meant. Its important to carefully note differences between similar cases, to reason properly about them.
Here is an example of aerospace engineers discussing Substantiation by Similarity, to introduce the idea to anyone new to AWE R&D-