Challenger Disaster Research Articles

Obituary: Dame Dr Anne McLaren

Obituary: Dame Dr Anne McLaren

Who is to blame for the Challenger explosion?

Who is to blame for the Challenger explosion?

Overflow and Containment in the Aftermath of Disaster

In reflecting on Hurricane Katrina, so soon after it struck the Gulf Coast,I want to consider what one might expect from the public inquiries andofficial investigations of the disaster. Prediction, whether of meteorologicalor social phenomena, is a risky business, but by now the field of scienceand technology studies (STS) has produced a substantial literature on theinvestigations and official inquiries that follow in the wake of notable dis-asters, accidents, technological failures, and other breakdowns of socio-technical order. This literature is diffuse and the interests and theoreticalperspectives of various authors differ, but the relevant work includes stud-ies of knowledge-making in the aftermath of such failures as the Windscalenuclear accident, the Bhopal disaster, the Challenger explosion, the bovinespongiform encephalitis (BSE) episode, and the debacle of the Florida votein the 2000 US Presidential election.

Language as a vehicle of knowing: the role of language and meaning in constructing knowledge

This paper emphasizes the role of language in constructing knowledge. It considers the context-dependant nature of knowledge: how do people interpret the situation; what tasks have to be accomplished; which knowledge do they consider important; etc. Firstly, the paper outlines its assumptions on epistemological issues, that is the knowledge concept and the role of language and meaning in creating knowledge. Secondly, referring to discourse theory the paper sheds light on the use of language in varying social contexts, highlighting interactivity, context dependency, functional, and creative nature of language. Thirdly, for the purpose of illustration the theoretical findings on language and meaning in constructing knowledge will be applied to the case of the Challenger accident.

Corporate Speak and the Psychiatric Profession

Every profession has its own nomenclature. Initiation into the profession involves learning this language. Medicine also has it language, mostly Latin or Greek words that can transform ordinary matters such as a sore muscle into a myalgia and many sore muscles into polymyalgia. We continue to use these words when describing clinical matters. But in other domains there has been an increased use of words from the world of business. Phrases such as the ‘‘the bottom line,’’ have become ubiquitous. Along with these phrases, of course, come a series of practices adapted from modern corporate culture. We have ‘‘retreats’’ to do ‘‘strategic planning’’ to perfect our ‘‘vision and mission statements,’’ define ‘‘goals,’’ and delineate our ‘‘objectives and work plans.’’ We perform ‘‘continuous quality improvement.’’ With this language comes a change in how we describe and perceive our roles. We are ‘‘providers’’ of health care and the people who traditionally were known as ‘‘patients’’ are our ‘‘customers’’ or ‘‘consumers.’’ It might be argued, that aside from injury to the profession’s amour propre, these changes may be salutary; they mirror the changes that have taken place in our profession. The ‘‘old boys club’’ has been dismantled and its priestly language has been superseded by a new way of communicating, one better suited to our current free-market, non-hierarchal, consumer responsive Society. Questioning these new values and their accompanying manner of speech puts one at risk of being labeled a curmudgeon. However, since I’m a confirmed curmudgeon I’ll do just that. It is not hard to understand why these terms and their associated practices might have once seemed efficacious: during the heydays of the technology boom every bright-eyed entrepreneur who staked a claim to the electronic highway was becoming a millionaire and WorldCom, Enron and Tyco where generating tens of billions in non-existent profits. ‘‘Nothing succeeds like success.’’ But we’ve seen the bubble burst. There has been enough experience with these concepts to provide ample evidence that they don’t necessarily deliver. In the past, a favorite example offered by the corporate speak gurus was that of NASA. As the story goes, when everybody working at the Agency from the Director to the janitor could recite their mission ‘‘Putting man safely into space,’’ the impossible became possible and men walked on the moon. However, since the Moon mission there have been a few set backs. Everybody at NASA could still recite the mantra ‘‘Putting man safely into space’’ when the O rings failed giving us the Challenger disaster. No doubt, it is unfair to blame the Challenger disaster on NASA’s Mission Statement. But by the same token why credit it with the successes of the Apollo mission? Perhaps a mission statement, even one known by all employees, is no different than other slogans. With repetition they lose their impact and when not put into practice, even their meaning. So a new Mission Statement must be crafted, and the ongoing Hawthorne experiment known as corporate management continues. But why pick on ‘‘mission statement’’ when there is so much that gets on my nerves: how about words such as ‘‘consumer’’ and ‘‘provider?’’ These terms were D. J. Luchins (&) Department of Psychiatry, University of Chicago, 5841 S. Maryland Ave MC3077, Chicago, IL 60637, USA e-mail: danl@yoda.bsd.uchicago.edu Adm Policy Ment Health & Ment Health Serv Res (2007) 34:421–423 DOI 10.1007/s10488-007-0112-4

Symmetry, asymmetry, and the real possibility of radical change: reply to Kochan

In his critique of my book Heidegger and Marcuse, Jeff Kochan (2006) asserts that I am committed to the possibility of private knowledge, transcendent truths, and individualism. In this reply I argue that he has misinterpreted my analysis of the Challenger disaster and Marcuse’s work. Because I do not dismiss Roger Boisjoly’s doubts about the Challenger launch, Kochan believes that I have abandoned a social concept of knowledge for a reliance on the private knowledge of a single individual. In fact, I consider Boisjoly’s observations just as social, if not as scientific, as the results of rigorous scientific study. Kochan’s reliance on a principle of symmetry derived from science studies to explain such politically charged technological controversies tends to mask the role of power and ideology in social life. Kochan interprets Marcuse as a failed Heideggerian who regresses from Heidegger’s social conception of human being to traditional individualism. I am accused of sharing this view. This interpretation overlooks the importance of the Hegelian–Marxist category of ‘real possibility’ in Marcuse’s work and so mistakes his critique of conformist politics for individualist romanticism. Marcuse always attempted to ground radical opposition in a community of struggle without abandoning the heritage of a long critical tradition. This view I willingly share.

The Social Shaping of Commission Reports

We know that conceptual models, or frames, are more than simply angles of vision or approaches. Each is comprised of theories, assumptions, and categories that influence where we look and what we find. Frames shape how questions are asked, what is taken as evidence, the conclusions drawn, and subsequent actions. In this paper, I consider the frame, identification of root causes, and policy recommendations of the 9/11 Commission report by comparing it with two others: The report of the presidential commission that investigated the space shuttle Challenger accident (1986) and the investigation board's report on the Columbia accident (2003). In making the comparison, I am not equating the three incidents. Terrorist attacks taking the lives of nearly 3000 and resulting in war are vastly different in immediate impact and long-range consequences from the two space shuttle accidents. There is a logic to the comparison, however. Having analyzed the social causes of the Challenger accident (Vaughan, 1996) and subsequently worked on the staff of the Columbia

On complicity theory

The received account of whistleblowing, developed over the last quarter century, is identified with the work of Norman Bowie and Richard DeGeorge. Michael Davis has detailed three anomalies for the received view: the paradoxes of burden, missing harm and failure. In addition, he has proposed an alternative account of whistleblowing, viz., the Complicity Theory. This paper examines the Complicity Theory. The supposed anomalies rest on misunderstandings of the received view or misreadings of model cases of whistleblowing, for example, the Challenger disaster and the Ford Pinto. Nevertheless, the Complicity Theory is important for as in science the contrast with alternative competing accounts often helps us better understand the received view. Several aspects of the received view are reviewed and strengthened through comparison with Complicity Theory, including why whistleblowing needs moral justification. Complicity Theory is also critiqued. The fundamental failure of Complicity Theory is its failure to explain why government and the public encourage and protect whistleblowers despite the possibility of considerable harm to the relevant company in reputation, lost jobs, and lost shareholder value.

Classic Feynman: all the adventures of a curious character

Richard Feynman (1918-1988) thrived on outrageous adventures. In the phenomenal national bestsellers Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! and Do You Care What Other People Think? the Nobel Prize-winning physicist recounted in an inimitable voice his adventures trading ideas on atomic physics with Einstein and Bohr and ideas on gambling with Nick the Greek, painting a naked female toreador, accompanying a ballet on his bongo drums, solving the mystery of the Challenger disaster, and much else of an eyebrow-raising, hugely entertaining, and astounding nature. One of the most influential and creative minds of recent history, Feynman also possessed an unparalleled ability as a storyteller, a delightful coincidence celebrated in this special omnibus edition of his classic stories. Now packaged with an hour-long audio CD of the 1978 Los Alamos from Below lecture, Classic Feynman offers readers a chance to finally hear a great tale in the orator's own voice.

From Challenger to Columbia

One of the most important tasks of engineering ethics is to give engineers the tools required to act ethically to prevent possible disastrous accidents which could result from engineers’ decisions and actions. The space shuttle Challenger disaster is referred to as a typical case in almost every textbook. This case is seen as one from which engineers can learn important lessons, as it shows impressively how engineers should act as professionals, to prevent accidents. The Columbia disaster came seventeen years later in 2003. According to the report of the Columbia accident investigation board, the main cause of the accident was not individual actions which violated certain safety rules but rather was to be found in the history and culture of NASA. A culture is seen as one which desensitizedmanagers and engineers to potential hazards as they dealt with problems of uncertainty. This view of the disaster is based on Dian Vaughan’s analysis of the Challenger disaster, where inherent organizational factors and culture within NASA had been highlighted as contributing to the disaster. Based on the insightful analysis of the Columbia report and the work of Diane Vaughan, we search for an alternative view of engineering ethics. We focus on the inherent uncertainty of engineers’ work with respect to hazard precaution. We discuss claims that the concept of professional responsibility, which plays a central role in orthodox engineering ethics, is too narrow and that we need a broader and more fundamental concept of responsibility. Responsibility which should be attributed to every person related to an organization and therefore given the range of responsible persons, governments, managers, engineers, etc. might be called “civic virtue”. Only on the basis of this broad concept of responsibility of civic virtue, we can find a possible way to prevent disasters and reduce the hazards that seem to be inseparable part of the use of complex technological systems.

Organizational Behavior and Disaster: A study of conflict at NASA

This paper examines how groupthink led to conflict in the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), with a focus on the Challenger and Columbia shuttle tragedies. We will show that, although there were technical causes of the accidents, there are deeper root causes that constitute a recurring thread. Throughout NASA's history, there have been budgetary and scheduling constraints. In an attempt to meet these externally imposed restrictions, management has unconsciously and repeatedly fallen into the psychological tendencies of groupthink. A bulletproof attitude amongst NASA officials was a direct cause of the Challenger accident. Management began tolerating increasing amounts of “acceptable flight risks.” Management compromised safety, one of the quality components of the project management “triple constraint” of schedule, budget, and quality. As a result of this disdain for managing quality, the second accident occurred with a chilling sense of déjà vu. We will examine the root causes of the pressure on management, as well as the traps of conflict that have befallen management.

Lost in space: A critique of NASA's crisis communications in the Columbia disaster

The explosion of space shuttle Columbia on 1 February 2003 shocked the nation and threatened to destroy the image and confidence NASA had labored years to restore in the wake of its poor handling of the Challenger disaster. This paper examines NASA's crisis communications regarding Columbia's explosion. It argues that the space agency did most things right in responding to the crisis, but it made errors that reflect serious and long-standing problems with its organizational culture. The paper concludes that NASA's handling of the crisis ultimately helped the agency to maintain good will with Congress, the media, and the American public. It proposes that the space agency must fix flaws with its organizational culture, or it may be forced into the unenviable position of relying on crisis communications to protect its image and reputation.

From liftoff to landing: NASA's crisis communications and resulting media coverage following the Challenger and Columbia tragedies

NASA's public relations effort following the explosion of the Challenger in 1986 is considered an example of crisis communications failure. After the Columbia disaster in 2003, NASA was praised for its successful handling of the crisis. This paper identifies how four newspapers presented NASA's crisis communication efforts following the two crises, utilizing widely accepted crisis communication concepts associated with stakeholder theory. Results showed that the print media reported that NASA followed specific communicative practices and accorded NASA more positive coverage following the Columbia disaster than the Challenger disaster.

The wane of childhood amnesia for autobiographical and public event memories

We modified Bruce, Dolan, and Phillips-Grant's (2000) threshold procedure for determining the wane of childhood amnesia. In two experiments, undergraduates labelled childhood events (e.g., your first permanent tooth came in) as know or recollect memories and estimated their age at the event's occurrence. In both studies the estimated transition from mostly know memories to mostly recollect memories was roughly 4.7 years. This transition estimate was replicated in a sample of adults (ages 24-65 years) with both Bruce et al.'s event-generation task and the Experiment 1a questionnaire. By contrast, in two experiments a transition estimate of roughly 6 years was found for undergraduates' memories of public events (e.g., the Challenger explosion). The wane of childhood amnesia appears to occur around 4.7 years.

Faith, Race and Nationalism

Faith, Race and Nationalism Dana Y. Takagi (bio) History teaches us clearly that the battle against colonialism does not run straight away along the lines of nationalism. Frantz Fanon (1963) The Wretched of the Earth When, for example, Aboriginal peoples strive for recognition, they are constrained to present their demands in the normative vocabulary available to them. That is, they seek recognition as 'peoples' and 'nations,' with 'sovereignty' or a 'right to 'self-determination,' even though these terms may distort or misdescribe the claim they would wish to make if it were expressed in their own languages. James Tully (1995) Strange Multiplicity Nationalism invokes tradition in order in order to assert the antagonism between irreconcilable social and cultural values. Lisa Lowe and David Lloyd (1997), The Politics of Culture in the Shadow of Capital Recently, I learned that a small piece of Captain Cook's ship, the Endeavor, was carried into outer space on a NASA space shuttle also bearing the name, Endeavor. NASA, in capitalizing on the legacy of Cook's spirit of exploration and scientific discovery, hoped to revitalize its space program after its premier shuttle, Challenger, exploded in 1987 shortly after take-off.2 NASA's invocation of Cook's eighteenth-century voyages across the Pacific symbolizes the potency of linking "science" with "exploration" in the late twentieth century.3 In this essay, I unhook this [End Page 271] coupling and call attention to the ways in which contemporary imagery about Cook's voyaging might also ask us to consider the very antithesis of Cook's legacy of "scientific exploration"—faith. Afterall, as is frequently noted, the rationality of the Enlightenment developed in antithesis to the authority of religious doctrine in all matters of self and public. Often, the topic of "scientific exploration" calls up the imagery of "discovery" (and its affective bravery) and as well of manifest destiny at the Pacific edges of the frontier of the New World. Indeed, in contemporary popular terms, this aspect of Cook's legacy thrives three hundred years after his last voyage. The imprints of Cook's voyages are evident in mass culture—from the long-running success of the TV series, Star Trek, to the recent New York Times Bestseller by Tony Horowitz, Blue Latitudes. Alternately, travel and voyaging in the Pacific by Westerners, particularly for the purpose of "scientific investigation," is in contemporary scholarship on the Pacific thought to be a historical beginning for the progressive chain of events resulting in the colonization and domination of the Pacific by the Britain, France, and the United States. While this latter reading of "science" and "exploration" is compelling on historical grounds, my point in this essay is to complement and enhance such a reading by asking what happens when we counterpose the "rationality" and "science" associated with eighteenth- or twentieth-century explorations with its opposite—faith, which is viewed as both "unrational" and "unscientific." In my view, tucking a small piece of Cook's ship into a multi-billion dollar space shuttle was surprising. I have always thought of NASA as the quintessential institution of "science" and technological know-how in American society. The very idea of slipping a small token from a 200-year-old ship in a space in the space shuttle is a lot like carrying a rabbit's foot or some equivalent talisman. Were the engineers at NASA being superstitious or just wishing to layer icing called "luck" on science? And, since the act was in itself not a public act—that is, it was not known or publicized as part of NASA's recuperation after the Challenger disaster—the idea that this was for the show of it cannot be seriously entertained. So, I've had to rethink the polarity between rocket science on the one hand and faith on the other. Perhaps the difference between the purveyors of each is not so different. Lately, the prospect of "intelligent design" [End Page 272] hopefully strikes a compromise between evolutionary thought and god-based faith. Is there a similar compromise to be struck about Cook, NASA, and Hawaii? How lucky is it that a piece of Cook's Endeavor is launched into space some...

Frontiers of space exploration

From the first experimentation with rocket technology in the early 20th century to the Mir space station and the Mars Pathfinder mission of 1997, this one-stop guide to space exploration provides a wealth of information for student researchers. Combining narrative description, analytical essays, a timeline, biographical profiles, and the text of key primary documents, Roger D. Launius, Chief Historian of NASA, provides the latest information and analysis on all aspects of space exploration. Four essays give a historical overview of space exploration and up-to-date examinations of the race to the moon, exploration of the solar system, space stations and space shuttles, and U.S.-Soviet cooperative ventures. Ready reference features include: a timeline of key events; biographical profiles of 24 American and Soviet space pioneers; the text of 20 key primary documents relating to space exploration initiatives; a table of American space flight since 1961; and an annotated bibliography of works on space history. The essays are designed to be understandable and to capture the human drama as well as the scientific accomplishments of space exploration. Biographical profiles include not only astronauts and cosmonauts, but also American and Soviet pioneers in the science of space exploration, NASA leaders, and the Challenger crew. Key documents include presidential speeches and directives on the creation of the space program and the decision to go to the moon, official statements on U.S.-Soviet cooperation in space, the text of the Apollo creW's radio broadcast from space on the first moon landing, recollections of Apollo astronauts who first landed on the moon, policy directives on the decision to build the space shuttle, the radio transcript of the last words from the space shuttle Challenger disaster, and a speech from Robert Zubrin, member of the National Space Society Board of Directors, addressing the promise of space exploration in the 21st century. A selection of photos complements the text.

Theorizing Disaster

Building explanations from data is an important but usually invisible process behind all published research. Here I reconstruct my theorizing for an historical ethnography of the 1986 Space Shuttle Challenger disaster and the NASA (National Aeronautical and Space Administration) decisions that produced that accident. I show how analogical theorizing, a method that compares similar events or activities across different social settings, leads to more refined and generalizable theoretical explanations. Revealing the utility of mistakes in theorizing, I show how my mistakes uncovered mistakes in the documentary record, converting my analysis to a revisionist account that contradicted the conventional explanation accepted at the time. Retracing how I developed the concepts and theory that explained the case demonstrates the connection between historic political and economic forces, organization structure and processes, and cultural understandings and actions at NASA. Finally, these analytic reflections show how analysis, writing, and theorizing are integrated throughout the research process.

Hindsight-Choice Bias in Combating Terrorism

Survey respondents assessed the risks of terrorist attacks and their consequences, and were asked how their assessments changed after 9/11/2001. This paper analyzes those risk assessments, and then uses respondents' patterns of risk assessments to explain their willingness to sacrifice civil liberties to combat terrorism. More than half of the respondents exhibited hindsight bias, i.e., reported that risk assessments did not rise after 9/11. Estimates should have risen given that a major attack was an event with a low and highly uncertain probability. Equivalent numbers showed hindsight bias surrounding space shuttle risks and the Challenger accident. There is general willingness to support airplane passenger profiling if the time costs of alternative policies are great, and there is support for surveillance policies to address terrorism risks as well. However, individuals suffering from hindsight bias are much less supportive. Interestingly, people exhibiting hindsight bias with respect to space shuttle accidents are also less supportive of these anti-terrorism policies. We explain these results as the phenomenon we label hindsight-choice bias: People assessing past decisions in which they are invested - such as the protective decisions the government made on behalf of its citizens - do not favor a change in policy after an unlikely event if they believe their risk estimates have not changed. Despite claiming that risks were not above their pre-9/11 levels, individuals exhibiting hindsight-choice bias do not have significantly lower terrorism risk beliefs than others. Yet, they are less supportive of anti-terrorism policies, which is consistent with continuing to favor policies that were previously desirable.

"Mathematical Modeling of Physical Systems": An Introduction

"Mathematical Modeling of Physical Systems": An Introduction

The Culture of Objectivity: Quantification, Uncertainty, and the Evaluation of Risk at NASA

For over three decades social studies of science have investigated ‘objectivity’ as a central, socially constructed assumption in scientific and engineering work. This literature has seldom been utilized in the study of organizations despite the fact that knowledge production and knowledge use in scientific and engineering organizations are presumed to be objective or independent of individual and social influences. In this article, the social studies of science literature as it conceptualizes and understands objectivity is reviewed. An analysis of the data on decision-making at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) during the years preceding the explosion of Challenger is carried out using concepts from this literature. Data on decision-making at NASA during the years preceding the explosion of Columbia are also analyzed. It is shown that the culture of objectivity at NASA interacted with time pressures to produce a misunderstanding of flight risk. This misunderstanding resulted from two general aspects of NASA’s culture: (i) an over-confidence in quantitative data went hand-in-hand with a marginalization of nonquantifiable data, leading to an insensitivity to uncertainty and a loss of organizational memory; and (ii) problem definition and solution creation were constructed as if they were independent of organizational goals, resulting in an inaccurate estimation of risk.