[SystemSafety] HROs and NAT (was USAF Nuclear Accidents prior to 1967)

Nancy Leveson leveson.nancy8 at gmail.com
Mon Sep 23 12:18:07 CEST 2013


One difference is that STAMP has a mathematical and physical underpinning.
And it is not a social science model and does not try to explain how social
systems work.


On Mon, Sep 23, 2013 at 5:50 AM, Andrew Rae <andrew.rae at york.ac.uk> wrote:

> There's a phenomena on the borderlands of science and media that doesn't
> have a good label, but goes something like this ....
>
> Someone makes a statement, typically a hypothesis about human behaviour.
> It has a "strong" and a "weak" interpretation.  The weak interpretation is
> something reasonable, usually actually completely unremarkable. It isn't
> new, and most people can agree with it without a lot of evidence.  The
> strong interpretation is a lot more specific, and quite controversial.
> Strong evidence would be needed to support this interpretation.
>
> Whenever the strong interpretation is attacked, the proponent of the
> hypothesis falls back on the weak interpretation, and says "who can
> disagree with this". As soon as the criticism goes away, they revert to
> making the strong interpretation again, with no better evidence.
>
> HRO is a fairly typical example of this phenomena. I don't think anyone
> disagrees with the weak interpretation, where organisation attitude,
> behaviour and structure has an influence over safety. Even naming
> particular organisational characteristics as likely to contribute to safety
> isn't controversial. The characteristics that HRO chooses had all been
> pointed out before, and many of them are simply basic safety management.
>
> The strong interpretation is that there is empirical support for naming a
> particular set of characteristics as the most important, and that this
> support comes from identifying particular organisations as safety
> over-achievers. You can't support this strong interpretation via the weak
> interpretation. The weak interpretation is a _fallback_ position that
> requires abandoning the strong interpretation. What's left is not HRO.  It
> is exactly the same space that Normal Accidents, Disaster Incubation
> Theory, HROs, Vulnerable System Syndrome, and (tangentially) STAMP, have
> been trying to fill. We know that organisation structure and attitude
> matters, but we don't have a successful model for how it matters. (I'm
> deliberately avoiding a definition of "successful" here. Choose one from
> reliable/repeatable, makes accurate predictions, is practically useful for
> safety management).   I put STAMP tangentially into that list because it is
> oriented more towards "practically useful" than "has explanatory power".
> Each model deserves to be evaluated against its own claims.
>
> Normal Accidents does something very similar to HRO in terms of
> strong/weak interpretations. It builds a not-particularly-controversial
> foundation about structural causes of accidents (raising some genuinely new
> insights along the way), but then draws much more specific and
> controversial conclusions. You can agree with everything in the book up to
> the final chapter, and still disagree with the take-away actions. The
> strong evidence required to support the take-away actions is not what the
> rest of the book provides - it is entirely illustration of the
> not-controversial, less-specific principles.
>
> The strong/weak interpretation phenomena is what leads to really messy
> arguments, particularly when the ideas are summarised and popularised.
> Q: "Do you agree with Normal Accidents?"
> A: "All but the 5% of it that you are probably thinking of when you asked
> the question".
>
>
>
> My system safety podcast: http://disastercast.co.uk
> My phone number: +44 (0) 7783 446 814
> University of York disclaimer:
> http://www.york.ac.uk/docs/disclaimer/email.htm
>
>
> On 23 September 2013 09:26, ECHARTE MELLADO JAVIER <
> javier.echarte at altran.com> wrote:
>
>>  (Lost, as in, they're still out there somewhere. One in a swamp in one
>> of the southern states, one in the water off the coast of Greece, I
>> think.). ****
>>
>> Was in spain.****
>>
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1966_Palomares_B-52_crash.****
>>
>> In fact a very funny incident… with our prime minister” in the beach… in
>> order to show  no danger in the area…****
>>
>>
>> http://www.bbc.co.uk/mundo/noticias/2013/01/130116_espana_palomares_bomba_perdida_cch.shtml
>> ****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> *De:* systemsafety-bounces at lists.techfak.uni-bielefeld.de [mailto:
>> systemsafety-bounces at lists.techfak.uni-bielefeld.de] *En nombre de *John
>> Downer
>> *Enviado el:* domingo, 22 de septiembre de 2013 21:31
>> *Para:* systemsafety at lists.techfak.uni-bielefeld.de
>> *Asunto:* Re: [SystemSafety] USAF Nuclear Accidents prior to 1967****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> I can't get too sucked into this (I'm a bit overwhelmed, sorry) but I
>> feel I ought to at least weigh in a little. ****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> *On the question of how many accidents we've had with the bomb:* It's
>> definitely more than a few. I appreciate Andrew's point that bureaucracies
>> often categorize near-accidents quite liberally, but I'm not sure that's
>> the case here. The Fifteen Minutes book I pointed to before does a good job
>> of highlighting some of the more significant near-misses and explaining
>> their significance. There's lots, you start losing count after a while.
>> Even Wiki has a pretty decent breakdown of some highlights <
>> en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_military_nuclear_accidents >. The US
>> really did lose a couple of H-bombs, (Lost, as in, they're still out there
>> somewhere. One in a swamp in one of the southern states, one in the water
>> off the coast of Greece, I think.). And let's remember that atomic bombs
>> contain a lot of *very* poisonous material. Accidents with the bomb can be
>> pretty catastrophic even if they don't detonate. And these are just the
>> accidents we *know* about. It's difficult to overstate the amount of
>> secrecy around the bomb. A large number of the old accidents we are now
>> reading about in books like the one Peter highlighted would have been
>> missing from books written even a decade ago. We just didn't know about
>> them until recently. We can only guess how many more there were, especially
>> as we get closer to the present. I've spoken to people who say there is
>> stuff that isn't in the books, and are in a position to know.****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> Plus, If we think of 'the bomb' in a wider sense, as the entire system of
>> nuclear deterrence (early warning infrastructure, etc), as Sagan does, for
>> instance, then we find even more accidents with even more catastrophic
>> potential. There have been a bunch of occasions where institutional or
>> technical mishaps and misunderstandings have (very) almost led to nuclear
>> war! The crash in Alaska was one. If it had taken out the early warning
>> station there, then the US would have assumed an attack was underway and
>> launched its own (read Fifteen minutes). Sagan talks about more (glitches
>> in US early warning systems during the Cuban missile crisis, for instance).
>> I briefly commented on a couple of others in an old blog post: <
>> http://blog.nuclearphilosophy.org/?p=138 >. Nuclear history is
>> existential.****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> *On the HRO / NAT debate:* I'm not sure why the discussion went in this
>> direction, but since it did, and it's interesting, I'll add my ten cents
>> (or is it two? I can never remember my American colloquialisms). Basically,
>> I don't think the two have to be antithetical (even if they are often
>> construed that way).****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> The essence of *HRO*, as far as I can see, is the argument that: (1)
>> There are there are organizational dimensions to making complex
>> socio/technical systems function safely. (2) Some systems are better at
>> these tricks than others, and have invested a lot of time in figuring them
>> out. And so (3): Sociologists should investigate and document the tricks of
>> organizations that do safety well, to see if there are any universal (or at
>> least transferable) principles that other organizations can benefit from.
>> ****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> It strikes me that this is a worthwhile endeavor, even if I'm sometimes
>> skeptical of of its findings and the wider implications drawn from them.*
>> ***
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> I'm a bit more wary about caricaturing *NAT* as I know Chick is on this
>> list, but I'll have a stab and he can correct me if I'm way off
>> base. Fundamentally I think NAT wants to say a couple of different things:
>> ****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> The first is that there are more fundamental structural factors (ie:
>> financial incentives) underlying any organizational practices, and it is
>> misleading to think we can attend to the former without also recognizing
>> the latter. I buy this, and I think a lot of HRO people wouldn't
>> necessarily disagree.****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> The second, and not necessarily related, point NAT wants to make is that
>> there are fundamental organizational reasons to believe that *no matter
>> how perfectly we design (or operate) complex, tightly-coupled systems, they
>> will always be prone to some level of failure* (ie: the normal
>> accident). (This has been explicitly conceded by the more prominent HRO
>> people.) And, further, that there are a some systems that we would think
>> very differently about (and perhaps wouldn't have built at all) if we
>> recognized this. ****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> I buy this argument as well. In fact I've tried to make the same point in
>> my own work, albeit in a different way. And I think it is this
>> argument that is most pertinent to the bomb discussion. The question it
>> raises, I guess, is how safe is safe enough. I think the NAT response to
>> Nancy's points would be that the bomb could be *simultaneously**: *(a)
>> an engineering marvel, and (b) a *really* bad idea. The infrastructure
>> of deterrence almost caused thermonuclear war (ie: the end of the world) on
>> several occasions. Our pursuit of nuclear energy very nearly led to the
>> loss of Tokyo, and still might (ie: if the spent fuel pools go down in
>> Fukushima). Personally, I'm not too comfortable with technologies that only
>> "almost" devastated the world, and a bit reluctant to marvel at the
>> technical brilliance that kept them (only just, and with a lot of luck)
>> from doing so. I'd be more impressed if we'd declined to build them at all.
>> ****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> I'm quite attached to the world. It's where I keep all my stuff.****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> J.****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> ---------****
>>
>> Dr John Downer****
>>
>> SPAIS; University of Bristol. ****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> On Sep 22, 2013, at 10:33 AM, Andrew Rae <andrew.rae at york.ac.uk> wrote:**
>> **
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> ** **
>>
>>
>>
>> ****
>>
>> I don't think the article suggests that the North Carolina incident was
>> unknown - the "new" information appears to be the specific quotes about *
>> ***
>>
>> the safety switches. From past revelations of this sort, I expect the 700
>> incidents will turn out to be seven hundred records in a recording system
>> which includes****
>>
>> numerous handling errors, stubbed toes, incorrectly filled-out forms, and
>> a few already widely discussed items of general safety concern. ****
>>
>> I'm cautious about reading too much into the nuclear weapons safety
>> record. The big weakness of HROs as a theory is that it selects
>> organisations based on how bad
>>  their safety record "would have been". This sort of counter-factual
>> reasoning ties my brain in knows - "we should look at what HROs are doing
>> because they are safer than we would expect them to be based on what they
>> are doing ... I mean based on what they are doing except for those bits
>> that make them safe ... you know, they are doing some dangerous things
>> which we shouldn't copy but some things that make it safe anyway that we
>> should copy, and we know which is which because it fits with our
>> preconceived notions of what people should do to be safe". ****
>>
>> I think that the nuclear weapons engineering community has likely done a
>> lot of things right, and a lot of things poorly. Unfortunately we don't
>> have enough data to use empirical methods to determine which is which. I've
>> got my fingers crossed we never get that data ...****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> [No, I'm not a fan of HROs or Normal Accidents. I don't think it's a
>> sociologist thing though - I have a lot of time for the work of Barry
>> Turner, Nick Pidgeon and John Downer. Maybe the trick is to spend just
>> enough time around engineers to understand how we think, without spending
>> so much time that you start to think in exactly the same ways.] ****
>>
>>
>> ****
>>
>> My system safety podcast: http://disastercast.co.uk
>> My phone number: +44 (0) 7783 446 814
>> University of York disclaimer:
>> http://www.york.ac.uk/docs/disclaimer/email.htm****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> On 22 September 2013 14:22, Nancy Leveson <leveson.nancy8 at gmail.com>
>> wrote:****
>>
>> Sorry, I didn't read the Guardian article because I'd heard about the
>> North Caroline incident 20 years ago and thought it was public knowledge as
>> it is widely talked about in public forums. I'm not sure who it is secret
>> from as everyone I know in the nuclear safety world knows about it. I went
>> back and read the Guardian article about some "700" incidents. It will be
>> interesting to find out what the author of the book is referring to. It is
>> hard for me to believe there have been 700 incidents that nobody knows
>> about, but perhaps the DoD is better at keeping these things quiet than
>> they are about other supposedly secret incidents. ****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> Nancy****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> On Sun, Sep 22, 2013 at 9:02 AM, Dick Selwood <dick at ntcom.co.uk> wrote:**
>> **
>>
>> Nancy said "The fact that there was one near miss (and note that it was
>> a miss) with nuclear weapons safety in the past 60+ years is an astounding
>> achievement."
>>
>> The article in the Guardian that Peter cites makes it clear that there
>> were several near-misses
>>
>> d****
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> ****
>>
>> On 22/09/2013 10:53, Peter Bernard Ladkin wrote:****
>>
>>  While we're indulging in second thoughts....
>>
>> On 9/21/13 8:10 PM, Nancy Leveson wrote:
>>
>> ****
>>
>> I'm not really sure why people are using an incident that happened 54
>> years ago when engineering was
>> very different in order to make points about engineered systems today. **
>> **
>>
>>
>> John Downer pointed out on the ProcEng list yesterday evening that
>> Schlosser also wrote an article for the Guardian a week ago in which he
>> pointed out the relevance of his historical discoveries for the present,
>> namely concerning the UK Trident deterrent.
>>
>>
>> http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/14/nuclear-weapons-accident-waiting-to-happen
>>
>> So he seems to think it is currently relevant.
>>
>> For those who don't know, Trident is a US nuclear multiple-warhead
>> missile carried on British-built and UK MoD-operated submarines, one of
>> whom is always at sea. The maintenance and docking base is in Scotland, at
>> Faslane on the West Coast. Scotland is to vote on independence from GB
>> (which will become LB if so) next year, and the putative government has
>> said it will close the base at Faslane. Further, the Trident "so-called
>> British so-called independent so-called deterrent" (Harold Wilson)
>> replacement will cost untold amounts of money (we have been told, but no
>> one quite believes what we have been told :-) ). Many senior politicians
>> and a large proportion of the concerned public think that money would not
>> so be well spent.
>>
>> It is obviously relevant to all these deliberations to assess how
>> dangerous the old kit really is. Given recent events which have shown US
>> and UK government agencies concerned with national security in a light
>> which has resulted in many citizens losing their trust, I would think any
>> technical assessment such as this, independent of government agencies, of
>> matters relevant to renewing or revoking Trident is a welcome contribution
>> to the debate.
>>
>> 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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>>
>> ****
>>
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>> ****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>>
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>>
>>
>>
>> ****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> --
>> Prof. Nancy Leveson
>> Aeronautics and Astronautics and Engineering Systems
>> MIT, Room 33-334
>> 77 Massachusetts Ave.
>> Cambridge, MA 02142
>>
>> Telephone: 617-258-0505
>> Email: leveson at mit.edu
>> URL: http://sunnyday.mit.edu****
>>
>>
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-- 
Prof. Nancy Leveson
Aeronautics and Astronautics and Engineering Systems
MIT, Room 33-334
77 Massachusetts Ave.
Cambridge, MA 02142

Telephone: 617-258-0505
Email: leveson at mit.edu
URL: http://sunnyday.mit.edu
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