4 ms·

How does the china accident/lab ratio compare to the rest of the world? There have been plenty of harmful and lethal accidents in US labs over the years as wel

by olliej 5y ago

How does the china accident/lab ratio compare to the rest of the world? There have been plenty of harmful and lethal accidents in US labs over the years as well. In neither country are these accidents common - they still make news when they occur, so with >4x the population could mean we think that they're occurring "all the time" simply because (say) we could be hearing about an accident in china multiple times a year, for years before we hear about an accident in the US say, and so on for other countries. It reminds me of people losing their minds over suicide rates in Chinese factories, because they looked at them in absolute terms and didn't comprehend the size of the factories. The factories with "insane" suicide rates had lower average suicide rates than the US, or even the china average.

halpert 5y ago
What if the U.S. had more deaths? Does that mean China would not need to make their labs safer? What if the US had fewer deaths, what would that mean? What is the point of your question?
- olliej 5y ago
  All accidents should cause administrators to see if there are lessons that could be taken to improve safety. My comment was a response to the article being clearly "this is a problem in china" rather than "this is a general problem in academia". I suspect it's the latter, so framing this as a "Chinese problem" doesn't do anything to help people who aren't in China.
  - halpert 5y ago
    Do you believe that it's possible for safety culture to exist and for government regulation to improve safety, or do you think that all lab accidents around the globe have the same set of root causes? In my opinion, trying to frame this as a global problem is likely the least helpful thing to do. Yes, accidents happen around the world, but, if the article is to be believed, people actively involved with lab practices in China believe there are preventable safety lapses happening that can be fixed by action from the Chinese government. Trying to tie these lapses to something else, with little more than pure conjecture, is not helpful and just derails the conversation.

by olliej 5y ago

halpert 5y ago

What if the U.S. had more deaths? Does that mean China would not need to make their labs safer? What if the US had fewer deaths, what would that mean? What is the point of your question?

olliej 5y ago
All accidents should cause administrators to see if there are lessons that could be taken to improve safety. My comment was a response to the article being clearly "this is a problem in china" rather than "this is a general problem in academia". I suspect it's the latter, so framing this as a "Chinese problem" doesn't do anything to help people who aren't in China.
- halpert 5y ago
  Do you believe that it's possible for safety culture to exist and for government regulation to improve safety, or do you think that all lab accidents around the globe have the same set of root causes? In my opinion, trying to frame this as a global problem is likely the least helpful thing to do. Yes, accidents happen around the world, but, if the article is to be believed, people actively involved with lab practices in China believe there are preventable safety lapses happening that can be fixed by action from the Chinese government. Trying to tie these lapses to something else, with little more than pure conjecture, is not helpful and just derails the conversation.