[SystemSafety] Saying the Wrong Thing

[Chris Hills]

Peter,

In your comments you say: "Sir John, a population biologist and not a safety
engineer, was inadvertently misleading his audience on a matter concerning
danger."

Yes and no.  Factually he may have been misleading but panic often kills
more than the original threat.  Misleading the public with a "debatable
white lie" if you will, that stops undue panic in the population might be
argued as making the situation safer.  

As it was there were people suggesting  that "by tomorrow night" we would
have clouds of radiation sauntering across the Home Counties and sheep in
Wales would glow in the dark meaning as from tea time the day after it would
not be safe to eat lamb (or beef or pork or...) .  You know what the UK Red
tops are like ( ie Bild.de)  

So perhaps whilst not 100% technically accurate (i.e. wrong) from a
scientific point of view, though at the time the situation was still
evolving, it was probably the right thing to say for the overall good of the
UK population.  I think we will never really know if it was "inadvertently"
or not.

A bit of a political answer but sometimes to quote Jack Nicholson as Col
Jessop from a Few Good Men: "You want the truth? You can't handle the
truth!"  Not that I am suggesting our wonderful government is anything but
open and honest all the time :-) 

Chris H


PS this is on the Bielefeld list. What happened to the York-google list and
the  proposed SCSC-york list? 

-----Original Message-----
From: systemsafety-bounces at techfak.uni-bielefeld.de
[mailto:systemsafety-bounces at techfak.uni-bielefeld.de] On Behalf Of Peter
Bernard Ladkin
Sent: 28 March 2013 15:45
To: systemsafety at techfak.uni-bielefeld.de
Subject: [SystemSafety] Saying the Wrong Thing

The Guardian praised the UK Government's soon-to-be-outgoing Chief
Scientific Advisor, Prof. Sir John Beddington, on three interventions, one
on Fukushima.

What Sir John was reported to have said in public on the Fukushima event,
five days after the earthquake and after the three containment-building
explosions, was inappropriate.

So here is my comment:
http://www.abnormaldistribution.org/2013/03/28/saying-the-wrong-thing/

PBL

--
Prof. Peter Bernard Ladkin, Faculty of Technology, University of Bielefeld,
33594 Bielefeld, Germany
Tel+msg +49 (0)521 880 7319  www.rvs.uni-bielefeld.de




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