lomapaseo wrote:
"The views on this forum are actually helpful. Many investigators are experts in their own specialized fields and generalists in the rest, yet they are official representatives of larger parties to an investigation. Taken as a single expert, they certainly aren't keys to the final answer yet taken as collective viewpoints they are often solicited for areas of further investigation in scope and technical depth. Some of you complain about suspicions of protecting the "party line" especially for manufacturer representatives. Given that most investigation teams consist of multiple parties and their experts, some of us do pay attention to the viewpoints expressed by others, including these forums and do ask questions and express opinions affecting the investigation based on all sources of information that we can achieve."
To lift from a previous recommendation - we might want to remember, for example, that the root cause of the failure which led to the Challenger explosion was first identified, investigated and then put to the public and the press in a form which all could understand by Professor Richard P. Feynmann, a Nobel laureate in physics but a man who, by his own admission, knew absolutely nothing specific about spacecraft or accident investigation. Who, having once seen it, could forget his tabletop demonstration with a C-clamp and a glass of icewater?
Of course experts in all fields of interest are vital to a full and complete understanding of what went wrong here. But I humbly submit that accident investigations would benefit from the presence of a few generalists - folks who are not members of a specific system community, but who have the skills to look at the bigger picture. Reports from a committee of dedicated experts tend to have the same value as designs by a committee of dedicated experts.
JMHO.
llater,
llamas