Studies in History

Stud. Hist. Phil. Sci. 38 (2007) 254–255

www.elsevier.com/locate/shpsa

and Philosophyof Science

Discussion

Who is to blame for the Challenger explosion?

Harry Collins a, Trevor Pinch b

a Cardiff Universityb Cornell University

Andrew Feenberg in his reply to Kochan (Feenberg, 2006) accuses Collins and Pinch(hereafter ‘us’) of being political dupes (in his reanalysis of the Challenger case discussedin Collins & Pinch, 1998). According to him we have used the principle of symmetry tohelp the managers avoid blame in the case of the Challenger explosion. Feenberg is surelyright that the principle of symmetry can be used in this political way but in the case ofChallenger all the political naivety lies with those desperate to blame the managers.Indeed, it is an immense disappointment to us that the unpicking of the details of thelaunch decision, carried out so skillfully by Diane Vaughan that the rationale of both sidescomes through clearly, has been lost to view in the scramble to blame the managers in thecase of Columbia. That philosophers and social scientists are so deeply involved in thisscramble is worrying.

On the day Challenger fell from grace approximately 14 Challenger-worths of fatalitiesoccurred on the American roads. In any one year, there are about 5,000 Challenger-equiv-alents of deaths on the roads. No one seems too bothered about these though we may besure that schoolteachers are represented among their numbers. We may also be sure that afair number of these accidents can be attributed to poor decisions by engineers and carmechanics. Why, then, the special concentration on the failure of Challenger and its man-agers? It seems to be something to do with a mismatch of expectations. The space shuttlehad been presented to the public as a safe means of transport, its security symbolized bythe fact that a school teacher was to ride in it. The responsibility for the shock and horrorlies with those who, in the modern political blaming jargon, provided the ‘false prospec-tus.’ Those people, however, are uncomfortably close to the top of the political powerstructure—very senior managers, senior politicians, and even the President of theUSA—so it is perhaps not surprising that a large number of people are happy to maintainthe fiction that the Challenger was about as perfect a means of transport as an airplane

0039-3681/$ - see front matter � 2006 Published by Elsevier Ltd.

doi:10.1016/j.shpsa.2006.12.006

E-mail addresses: collinshm@Cardiff.ac.uk (H. Collins), tjp2@cornell.edu (T. Pinch).

H. Collins, T. Pinch / Stud. Hist. Phil. Sci. 38 (2007) 254–255 255

and that something went wrong was the fault of someone lower down in the hierarchy. It isa pity so many of what should be a politically sophisticated group have bought into theidea.

As we understand it, at the outset of the shuttle program the engineers used their stan-dard risk analysis technology to predict that about 2% of flights would fail. That is whathas happened. Feenberg’s and others’ blame game implies that there should have been nofailures. It is possible that a shuttle as safe as an airplane could have been built but thiswould have required a hugely expensive and long-drawn out development and testing pro-gram. That is where the road accidents come in: how could one possibly justify spendingorders of magnitude more money on the scientifically almost useless space shuttle to save afew lives when so many are dying in other ways. On the contrary it would be morally inde-fensible to make a shuttle as safe as an airplane. Test pilots and astronauts know the oddsand take the risk. Presumably, Christa McAuliffe, or at least the school children thatwatched the launch, did not.

As for the moment itself, none of us who are parties to this debate have anything butDiane Vaughan’s book to go on. If you read the crucial pages it is very hard to see fromwhat it is that Feenberg makes his case–except that Boisjoly was ‘right’ in the sense thatthe shuttle crashed. At the time, as one can see from the book, the engineers and the man-agers were weighing up the odds. It can be guaranteed that the managers did not think theshuttle would crash or they would not have launched. But they knew there was a chance itwould crash; every time they go with the decision to launch they must know there is achance it will crash, presumable a chance amounting to something like 2%. The debatewas about whether the chance of it crashing was so great on this particular occasion thatlaunching should have been vetoed. Read the debate and it is clear that the case was notdecisively made. And, in any case, it seems that an additional crucial feature was windsheer, which was not mentioned in the discussion. Our guess would be that there was atleast one astrologer, one reader of Tarot cards, and one crystal ball gazer who also pre-dicted that the Challenger would crash. Should we be berating the managers because, ala Feenberg, they too were right!

No! The attribution of blame has to be decided on who made prospective judgments ofrightness or wrongness for what is counted in the community as good reasons. 20/20 hind-sight should no more be a part of the serious philosopher’s toolkit than Tarot readings.

References

Collins, H., & Pinch, T. (1998). The Golem at large. What you should know about technology. Cambridge:Cambridge University Press.

Feenberg, A. (2006). Symmetry, asymmetry, and the real possibility of a radical change: reply to Kochan. Studies

in History and Philosophy of Science, 37A (4).