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There is a very gung ho culture in labs about safety. It slows you down to do things right and when it comes to reviews the cowboys (and girls) who do things wr

There is a very gung ho culture in labs about safety. It slows you down to do things right and when it comes to reviews the cowboys (and girls) who do things wrong but fast get better reviews because they get more done. Nuclear labs kill the people inside them at worst. Bio labs ... Well there's a reason why I think covid was the worst lab accident in human history.

bumby 4y ago
I’m not sure why you’ve been downvoted but this is a very prevalent attitude at hazardous facilities that are run by contractors. In particular, when the hazards are relatively low probability events and there are perverse incentives to roll the dice in the name of productivity. In a previous job in a hazardous facility, I’ve had very senior managers sit me down to tell me I don’t want to get the reputation for slowing things down by enforcing safety rules. I’m personally glad I’ve moved on with my career.
- rdtwo 4y ago
  I think this is universal. The safety rules go so overboard that the critical ones get ignored with the stupid ones because employees don’t know which ones are the important ones. If everything is critical nothing is
  - bumby 4y ago
    This is very true. At a certain point, management needs to be willing to prioritize what safety requirements they are willing to endorse. The worst of both worlds is when leadership isn't willing to formally do so, but push an informal culture to ignore safety rules. It’s worse when it’s low probability but high severity risks. Sometimes something that is critical but low probability is more easily conflated with not being a legitimate risk. I dog think it’s telling that the article made it seem like the entire safety team quit en-masse
  - s0rce 4y ago
    This is major issue in my experience. Even introducing new benign chemicals can lead to lengthy reviews and project delays. I've also found that when I've asked directly how to safely handle something the safety people don't have an answer and end up with an extremely conservative approach that doesn't appear to be driven by actual risks (severity or probability).
  - BurningFrog 4y ago
    Classic "boy who cried wolf" syndrome. Also: “The safest way to make laws respected is to make them respectable.” ― Frédéric Bastiat
    - bumby 4y ago
      Counterpoint is that it's easy to dismiss a requirement when one doesn't fully understand it. Sometimes that takes less work to dismiss it rather than spending the effort to remove one's ignorance. Particularly in safety critical systems, it's probably prudent to assume there is a good intent first.
      - jackvalentine 4y ago
        A classic one for home food preserving - some of the old recipes have steps that ‘don’t make sense’ but are crucial to food safety. Without them you might get botulism.
        bumby 4y ago
        I just learned about this one recently. Basically, how canning with oil isn't really worth the risk.
  - sbierwagen 4y ago
    My first job out of highschool: overnight loader/stocker at a hardware store. The guy who ran the big forklift in the lumber section was a bit of a cowboy. At the start of the night there would be a big pile of lumber, and he had to sort it and get it on the shelves. We couldn’t really run two lifts at the same time due to aisle width, so he did the job solo, and ran the equipment fast to get it done in time. Start of shift one evening an upper manager came down and said they reviewed security camera footage, that he was driving too fast, and needed to be more careful. But how do I get it done in time, he said? She emitted the verbal equivalent of a shrug, and left. Because, of course, she doesn’t want him to be slower, she wanted him to be more careful. To be on record as having issued a warning, so that if something happened, her ass would be covered. She couldn’t solve the problem but she could certainly apportion blame beforehand. A formative experience for 19 year old me.
    - bumby 4y ago
      Yeah, that's more of a CYA than an actual strong safety culture. It's more safety theater than anything else. I've had plenty of similar instances, where managers were allowed to get rid of safety/quality requirements as long as they formally documented that they understood and accepted the risks. They almost were never willing to do so, but would still pressure their employees to, you know, find some other way to get the work done faster.
- justinator 4y ago
  > I’m not sure why you’ve been downvoted Because "Covid 19 was engineered in a lab, then released" is nothing but a conspiracy theory.
  - tormeh 4y ago
    Conspiracy to cover up a mistake, maybe. There's no way to know, but given what is known about the origin of covid it's too plausible to just dismiss. We'll just have to live with the ambiguity.
  - leetrout 4y ago
    You jumped to some conclusions. OP said a lab accident. This could have been from an animal sample. Everyone seems to conflate lab leak with lab manufacture (or jump further to purposeful leak).
    - chihuahua 4y ago
      In addition to what you said (conflating lab leak with various things), there's another factor: Early on, the people who were funding the gain-of-function research at WIV put out a statement that considering possibility of lab leak == racism, and some people are still following those orders. There is no proof that it was or was not a lab leak, engineered or not, intentional or not. Whatever evidence there was has been destroyed.
  - thrown_22 4y ago
    There's a difference between escape and release. Not sure why you put words in my mouth.
    - justinator 4y ago
      I'm certainly not putting words in your mouth. You asked why you were being downvoted. I mentioned that there's a conspiracy theory along the lines of what you're saying. In no way did I say, "YOU'RE propagating a conspiracy theory". Just that there is a thing, and that thing is in some way influencing people's opinion on your comment. That does not imply intent.
bboygravity 4y ago
> Well there's a reason why I think covid was the worst lab accident in human history. And that reason likely has to do more with the fact that you're not a virologist nor someone who has a deep understanding of virus evolution and how Sars-CoV2 does what it does.
- thrown_22 4y ago
  If there's a big explosion in Los Alamos I'm going to think it's a nuclear explosion even if everyone else says it's a meteor. Balance of probability is that the biological weapons lab was doing biological weapons research and it got out. Without a non virologist investigating what happened there this is the same level of believability as cops clearing themselves of wrong doing in an afternoon.
  - dreamcompiler 4y ago
    The probability of a nuclear explosion at Los Alamos is vanishingly close to zero for lots of reasons. The probability of a nuclear accident at Los Alamos is pretty much 1.0, since several have happened there before, and recently.
    - thrown_22 4y ago
      That's not what I said. I said that if an explosion similar to the Chelyabinsk meteor happened there I'd need _extreme_ proof that it wasn't a nuclear explosion.

bumby 4y ago

I’m not sure why you’ve been downvoted but this is a very prevalent attitude at hazardous facilities that are run by contractors. In particular, when the hazards are relatively low probability events and there are perverse incentives to roll the dice in the name of productivity. In a previous job in a hazardous facility, I’ve had very senior managers sit me down to tell me I don’t want to get the reputation for slowing things down by enforcing safety rules. I’m personally glad I’ve moved on with my career.

rdtwo 4y ago
I think this is universal. The safety rules go so overboard that the critical ones get ignored with the stupid ones because employees don’t know which ones are the important ones. If everything is critical nothing is
- bumby 4y ago
  This is very true. At a certain point, management needs to be willing to prioritize what safety requirements they are willing to endorse. The worst of both worlds is when leadership isn't willing to formally do so, but push an informal culture to ignore safety rules. It’s worse when it’s low probability but high severity risks. Sometimes something that is critical but low probability is more easily conflated with not being a legitimate risk. I dog think it’s telling that the article made it seem like the entire safety team quit en-masse
- s0rce 4y ago
  This is major issue in my experience. Even introducing new benign chemicals can lead to lengthy reviews and project delays. I've also found that when I've asked directly how to safely handle something the safety people don't have an answer and end up with an extremely conservative approach that doesn't appear to be driven by actual risks (severity or probability).
- BurningFrog 4y ago
  Classic "boy who cried wolf" syndrome. Also: “The safest way to make laws respected is to make them respectable.” ― Frédéric Bastiat
  - bumby 4y ago
    Counterpoint is that it's easy to dismiss a requirement when one doesn't fully understand it. Sometimes that takes less work to dismiss it rather than spending the effort to remove one's ignorance. Particularly in safety critical systems, it's probably prudent to assume there is a good intent first.
    - jackvalentine 4y ago
      A classic one for home food preserving - some of the old recipes have steps that ‘don’t make sense’ but are crucial to food safety. Without them you might get botulism.
      - bumby 4y ago
        I just learned about this one recently. Basically, how canning with oil isn't really worth the risk.
- sbierwagen 4y ago
  My first job out of highschool: overnight loader/stocker at a hardware store. The guy who ran the big forklift in the lumber section was a bit of a cowboy. At the start of the night there would be a big pile of lumber, and he had to sort it and get it on the shelves. We couldn’t really run two lifts at the same time due to aisle width, so he did the job solo, and ran the equipment fast to get it done in time. Start of shift one evening an upper manager came down and said they reviewed security camera footage, that he was driving too fast, and needed to be more careful. But how do I get it done in time, he said? She emitted the verbal equivalent of a shrug, and left. Because, of course, she doesn’t want him to be slower, she wanted him to be more careful. To be on record as having issued a warning, so that if something happened, her ass would be covered. She couldn’t solve the problem but she could certainly apportion blame beforehand. A formative experience for 19 year old me.
  - bumby 4y ago
    Yeah, that's more of a CYA than an actual strong safety culture. It's more safety theater than anything else. I've had plenty of similar instances, where managers were allowed to get rid of safety/quality requirements as long as they formally documented that they understood and accepted the risks. They almost were never willing to do so, but would still pressure their employees to, you know, find some other way to get the work done faster.
justinator 4y ago
> I’m not sure why you’ve been downvoted Because "Covid 19 was engineered in a lab, then released" is nothing but a conspiracy theory.
- tormeh 4y ago
  Conspiracy to cover up a mistake, maybe. There's no way to know, but given what is known about the origin of covid it's too plausible to just dismiss. We'll just have to live with the ambiguity.
- leetrout 4y ago
  You jumped to some conclusions. OP said a lab accident. This could have been from an animal sample. Everyone seems to conflate lab leak with lab manufacture (or jump further to purposeful leak).
  - chihuahua 4y ago
    In addition to what you said (conflating lab leak with various things), there's another factor: Early on, the people who were funding the gain-of-function research at WIV put out a statement that considering possibility of lab leak == racism, and some people are still following those orders. There is no proof that it was or was not a lab leak, engineered or not, intentional or not. Whatever evidence there was has been destroyed.
- thrown_22 4y ago
  There's a difference between escape and release. Not sure why you put words in my mouth.
  - justinator 4y ago
    I'm certainly not putting words in your mouth. You asked why you were being downvoted. I mentioned that there's a conspiracy theory along the lines of what you're saying. In no way did I say, "YOU'RE propagating a conspiracy theory". Just that there is a thing, and that thing is in some way influencing people's opinion on your comment. That does not imply intent.

bboygravity 4y ago

> Well there's a reason why I think covid was the worst lab accident in human history. And that reason likely has to do more with the fact that you're not a virologist nor someone who has a deep understanding of virus evolution and how Sars-CoV2 does what it does.

thrown_22 4y ago
If there's a big explosion in Los Alamos I'm going to think it's a nuclear explosion even if everyone else says it's a meteor. Balance of probability is that the biological weapons lab was doing biological weapons research and it got out. Without a non virologist investigating what happened there this is the same level of believability as cops clearing themselves of wrong doing in an afternoon.
- dreamcompiler 4y ago
  The probability of a nuclear explosion at Los Alamos is vanishingly close to zero for lots of reasons. The probability of a nuclear accident at Los Alamos is pretty much 1.0, since several have happened there before, and recently.
  - thrown_22 4y ago
    That's not what I said. I said that if an explosion similar to the Chelyabinsk meteor happened there I'd need _extreme_ proof that it wasn't a nuclear explosion.