Need name of woman who assessed NASA safety culture

Need name of woman who assessed NASA safety culture


After Columbia went down, NASA looked around
for outside comments on its safety practices, and
brought in a woman who had earlier published
a book on NASA's bad practices -- a book nobody
at NASA seemed to ever recall seeing before.

What was her name and that of her book, please?

Need this for an article -- will post article here,
once it's published next week.

Thanks, team!

JimO

"Jim Oberg" wrote:

Need name of woman who assessed NASA safety culture


After Columbia went down, NASA looked around
for outside comments on its safety practices, and
brought in a woman who had earlier published
a book on NASA's bad practices -- a book nobody
at NASA seemed to ever recall seeing before.

What was her name and that of her book, please?

Need this for an article -- will post article here,
once it's published next week.

Possibly Diane Vaughan, "The Challenger Launch Decision"?


--

Brian Lawrence

Wantage, Oxfordshire, UK

On Fri, 17 Dec 2004 15:04:08 +0000, Jim Oberg wrote:

Need name of woman who assessed NASA safety culture


After Columbia went down, NASA looked around for outside comments on its
safety practices, and brought in a woman who had earlier published a
book on NASA's bad practices -- a book nobody at NASA seemed to ever
recall seeing before.

What was her name and that of her book, please?

Need this for an article -- will post article here, once it's published
next week.

Thanks, team!


The Challenger Launch Decision : Risky Technology, Culture, and Deviance
at NASA by Diane Vaughan

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg...23104?v=glance

I think a prime example of normalization of deviance would be "The Sunday
Funnies". Look it up. It's a term that is used to describe anomalies on
either the Space Station or Shuttle. Instead of being call some horrible
acronym or name like "List of Strange Anomaly that we should be fixing",
it's called "The Sunday Funnies" ha ha ha. It doesn't really motivate
anyone to work hard fixing them, but might make for some good reading on a
Monday morning. Ha ha ha, to see all the funny things that occurred in the
last week. A culture of sugar coating and nice sound jargon to talk about
nasty things.

I think she used the example of "In family", to describe deviant things
that occurred in the past, but are ok, because everything turned out ok
last time. "In family" what a nice sounding term where it must be ok. I
could be wrong about the example she used.

Craig Fink

Thanks... Vaughan it was.

In mission control we used the term 'funny' for an event that
was unexpected and inexplicable, as in, 'something funny's going on with the
DFI,"
etc. They were never considered amusing. We would worry them to death,
either theirs or ours.


"Craig Fink" wrote in
I think a prime example of normalization of deviance would be "The Sunday
Funnies". Look it up. It's a term that is used to describe anomalies on
either the Space Station or Shuttle. Instead of being call some horrible
acronym or name like "List of Strange Anomaly that we should be fixing",
it's called "The Sunday Funnies" ha ha ha. It doesn't really motivate
anyone to work hard fixing them, but might make for some good reading on a
Monday morning. Ha ha ha, to see all the funny things that occurred in the
last week. A culture of sugar coating and nice sound jargon to talk about
nasty things.

Vaughan, that's her. Thanks!

Yeah, I understand what your saying, but it's on an intellectual level. To
me a big part of normalization of deviance has to do with the terms and
jargon that are used everyday and how they invoke emotions and a response
on a subconscious level. Everyone understands what funny means in the MCC,
but the emotional subconscious response isn't there if the words are sugar
coated.

You can see it in this newsgroup as well. I've used the term "Dead men
Orbiting" to describe this latest disaster. There are many "Dead men
Orbiting" scenarios out there, but if you can't even say the words, your
going to be lost from the beginning. NASA uses the term "Bad Day", or
"Loss of", or "Inflight Anomaly", what Anomaly the thing just blew up.
"Bad Day", what, is it raining outside. Talking around the subject,
instead of having direct and frank discussions. You end up with everyone
dancing around the problem afraid of making someone else feel
uncomfortable.

Instead, talk about "Dead Men Orbiting" and evoke the
emotional/subconscious response, as it should, and as a group everyone
will be motivated on the intellectual level as well as the
emotional/subconscious level. Using the correct words, a new Political
Correctness, would be one of the simplest and easiest ways to bring about
frank and direct discussion and the cultural change that NASA needs.

Craig Fink




On Fri, 17 Dec 2004 16:31:24 +0000, Jim Oberg wrote:


Thanks... Vaughan it was.

In mission control we used the term 'funny' for an event that was
unexpected and inexplicable, as in, 'something funny's going on with the
DFI,"
etc. They were never considered amusing. We would worry them to death,
either theirs or ours.


"Craig Fink" wrote in
I think a prime example of normalization of deviance would be "The
Sunday Funnies". Look it up. It's a term that is used to describe
anomalies on either the Space Station or Shuttle. Instead of being call
some horrible acronym or name like "List of Strange Anomaly that we
should be fixing", it's called "The Sunday Funnies" ha ha ha. It
doesn't really motivate anyone to work hard fixing them, but might make
for some good reading on a Monday morning. Ha ha ha, to see all the
funny things that occurred in the last week. A culture of sugar coating
and nice sound jargon to talk about nasty things.

Article in the Houston Chronicle:

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory...pstory/2951462

quotes by John Young

"I was in the astronaut office the other day, and I asked them how many
people thought NASA had changed its culture and nobody raised their hand,"
Young said. "There were about 100 people there, so that's how they feel
right now."

"I really believe we should be operating it, flying it, right now because
there's just not a lot we can do to make it any better,"

"When I was flying it, the way they put it to me was that you could almost
hit the carbon-carbon with a sledgehammer and nothing would hurt it."

end quotes

lol, "almost", which is what happened, the equivelent of 100 lbs
sledgehammer.

Craig Fink

Craig Fink wrote:
I think a prime example of normalization of deviance would be "The Sunday
Funnies". Look it up. It's a term that is used to describe anomalies on
either the Space Station or Shuttle. Instead of being call some horrible acronym
or name like "List of Strange Anomaly that we should be fixing", it's called "The
Sunday Funnies" ha ha ha.

On the boat we called the same list the 'green weenie'.

It doesn't really motivate anyone to work hard fixing them, but might make for some
good reading on a Monday morning. Ha ha ha, to see all the funny things that
occurred in the last week. A culture of sugar coating and nice sound jargon to talk
about nasty things.

The black humor and sexual nicknames used for many things don't stop
the submarine community from exhibiting a high degree of discipline
and attention to detail.

So, your simple minded analysis fails by existence proof, and
indicates the truth of what we already knew... The causes lie much
deeper, and only a troll would be mislead by mere names.

D.
--
Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.

-Resolved: To be more temperate in my postings.
Oct 5th, 2004 JDL

Craig Fink wrote:

Everyone understands what funny means in the MCC,
but the emotional subconscious response isn't there if the words are sugar
coated.

Only a fool believes that.

D.
--
Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.

-Resolved: To be more temperate in my postings.
Oct 5th, 2004 JDL

Instead, talk about "Dead Men Orbiting" and evoke the
emotional/subconscious response, as it should, and as a group everyone
will be motivated on the intellectual level as well as the
emotional/subconscious level. Using the correct words, a new Political
Correctness, would be one of the simplest and easiest ways to bring about
frank and direct discussion and the cultural change that NASA needs.

Craig Fink



And in the jargon of the FAA and the NTSB what's been going on during the
past 2 years (post-Columbia) would be called "tombstone engineering", i.e.
fixing design/operational problems after people have become aviation
fatalities.

Later
Ray Schmitt