Technology’s disasters share long trail of hubris says Borenstein. Climategate and the Need For Greater Scientific Openness is the story at Slashdot to see a disaster in action.
One is an example of the other.
The ‘technology disaster’ being considered isn’t, of course, climate change but rather about those bit evil, greedy, careless oil companies and the idea that “Unfortunately, safety costs money, so it’s usually not a priority.”
The common thread – which the new presidential oil spill commission will be looking for – often is technological arrogance and hubris. It’s the belief by those in charge that they’re the experts, that they know what they’re doing is safe. Add to that the human weaknesses of avoidance, greed and sloppiness, say academics who study disasters.
Those human weaknesses are given example in the climate brouhaha.
The Guardian follows up on the recent news that CRU climate scientists were cleared of scientific misconduct with an article that focuses on how the controversy could have been avoided, and public trust retained, had the scientists made more of an effort to be open about their research.
Much of that controversy centers on the messages about “hide the decline” and ‘We have 25 or so years invested in the work. Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it?’
Engineering disasters happen because there is sometimes overreach in trying to build something new. It is a matter of estimating what is not known and missing the estimates. The arrogance, greed, and ignorance of human costs is not in the engineering realm but rather by those who purchase the design, cut corners building it due to buyer pressures, or use what is built outside of its design realm. That contrasts to climate research where the pressure is to obtain public grant funding by pleasing the political constituency.
Reality has a way of defeating hubris. Those who actually build things and stake their reputation on the result are humbled by reality, sometimes to suicide, That is engineering, not research. It is researchers who can pontificate about how great their efforts are until someone starts wondering about how that research fits reality. That is much of the story of the climate scandal. The researchers showed hubris in avoiding questions and in squashing unpleasant dissent. The efforts to maintain this hubris, the whitewash reports by friends and colleagues, are raising more questions than they answer in an attempt to maintain the self image.
What PhysOrg illustrates is also hubris. It is in the focus on the “disaster” side of learning and blaming that on a hubris that could better be seen if the author looked in the mirror, the one that shows him and the climate scandal researchers and much of the academic community standing in plain view in the reflection.