Range, page 34
They analyzed fifteen years of tech patents: E. Melero and N. Palomeras, “The Renaissance Man Is Not Dead! The Role of Generalists in Teams of Inventors,” Research Policy 44 (2015): 154–67.
comic books: A. Taylor and H. R. Greve, “Superman or the Fantastic Four? Knowledge Combination and Experience in Innovative Teams,” Academy of Management Journal 49, no. 4 (2006): 723–40.
Wertham manipulated: C. L. Tilley, “Seducing the Innocent: Fredric Wertham and the Falsifications That Helped Condemn Comics,” Information and Culture 47, no. 4 (2012):383-413.
specialized surgeons get better outcomes: M. Maruthappu et al., “The Influence of Volume and Experience on Individual Surgical Performance: A Systematic Review,” Annals of Surgery 261, no. 4 (2015): 642–47; N. R. Sahni et al., “Surgeon Specialization and Operative Mortality in the United States: Retrospective Analysis,” BMJ 354 (2016): i3571; A. Kurmann et al., “Impact of Team Familiarity in the Operating Room on Surgical Complications,” World Journal of Surgery 38, no. 12 (2014): 3047–52; M. Maruthappu, “The Impact of Team Familiarity and Surgical Experience on Operative Efficiency,” Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine 109, no. 4 (2016): 147–53.
analyzed its database of major flight accidents: “A Review of Flightcrew-Involved Major Accidents of U.S. Air Carriers, 1978 Through 1990,” National Transportation Safety Board, Safety Study NTSB/SS-94/01, 1994.
University of Utah professor Abbie Griffin: A. Griffin, R. L. Price, and B. Vojak, Serial Innovators: How Individuals Create and Deliver Breakthrough Innovations in Mature Firms (Stanford, CA: Stanford Business Books, 2012 [Kindle ebook]).
“could be considered a professional outsider”: D. K. Simonton, Origins of Genius (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999).
“unwilling to spend more time on the subject”; Howard Gruber: H. E. Gruber, Darwin on Man: A Psychological Study of Scientific Creativity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981).
at least 231 scientific pen pals; experiments with seeds: T. Veak, “Exploring Darwin’s Correspondence,” Archives of Natural History 30, no. 1 (2003): 118–38.
“bewildering miscellany”: H. E. Gruber, “The Evolving Systems Approach to Creative Work,” Creativity Research Journal 1, no.1 (1988): 27–51.
“a lot of apps open in my brain”: R. Mead, “All About the Hamiltons,” The New Yorker, February. 9, 2015.
CHAPTER 10: FOOLED BY EXPERTISE
The bet was on: Yale history professor Paul Sabin’s book The Bet (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2013) gives fascinating background and analysis. A shorter sample of that analysis is C. R. Sunstein, “The Battle of Two Hedgehogs,” New York Review of Books, December 5, 2013.
“population growth curve”: P. Ehrlich, Eco-Catastrophe! (San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1969).
“green revolution”: G. S. Morson and M. Schapiro, Cents and Sensibility (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2017 [Kindle ebook]).
the food supply per person increased: This and other statistics in the paragraph (share of undernourished citizens; death rate from famine; birth rates; population growth trajectory) come from the incredible online publication Our World in Data, founded by University of Oxford economist Max Roser. The supply of calories per person per day, for example, can be found here: https://slides.ourworldindata.org/hunger-and-food-provision/#/kcalcapitaday-by-world-regions-mg-png.
United Nations projects: United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division, “World Population Prospects: The 2017 Revision, Key Findings and Advance Tables,” Working Paper No. ESA/P/WP/248.
“now the population bomb has detonated”: P. R. Ehrlich and A. H. Ehrlich, The Population Explosion (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1990).
When economists later examined: K. Kiel et al., “Luck or Skill? An Examination of the Ehrlich-Simon Bet,” Ecological Economics 69, no. 7 (2010): 1365–67.
Tetlock decided to put: Tetlock gives the results of his work in great (and witty) detail in Expert Political Judgment: How Good Is It? How Can We Know? (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005).
“curiously inverse relationship”: Tetlock, Expert Political Judgment.
Superforecasters’ online interactions: P. E. Tetlock et al., “Bringing Probability Judgments into Policy Debates via Forecasting Tournaments,” Science 355 (2017): 481–83.
“Forecasts of dollar-euro exchange rates”: G. Gigerenzer, Risk Savvy (New York: Penguin, 2014).
“active open-mindedness”; “myside” ideas: J. Baron et al., “Reflective Thought and Actively Open-Minded Thinking,” in Individual Differences in Judgment and Decision Making, ed. M. E. Toplak and J. A. Weller (New York: Routledge, 2017 [Kindle ebook]).
never mind seriously entertain them: J. A. Frimer et al., “Liberals and Conservatives Are Similarly Motivated to Avoid Exposure to One Another’s Opinions,” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 72 (2017): 1–12.
study during the run-up to the Brexit vote: Online Privacy Foundation, “Irrational Thinking and the EU Referendum Result” (2016).
skin cream and gun control: D. Kahan et al., “Motivated Numeracy and Enlightened Self-Government,” Behavioural Public Policy 1, no. 1 (2017): 54–86.
Not science knowledge, science curiosity: D. M. Kahan et al., “Science Curiosity and Political Information Processing,” Advances in Political Psychology 38, no. 51 (2017): 179–99.
“Depth can be inadequate”: Baron et al., “Reflective Thought and Actively Open-Minded Thinking.”
first four models: H. E. Gruber, Darwin on Man: A Psychological Study of Scientific Creativity, 127.
“views therein advocated”: The Autobiography of Charles Darwin.
“In one of the most remarkable interchanges”: J. Browne, Charles Darwin: A Biography, vol. 1, Voyaging (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1995), 186.
Einstein was a hedgehog: For one of many references to Einstein’s hedgehoginess, see Morson and Schapiro, Cents and Sensibility.
“A consensus seems to exist”: G. Mackie, “Einstein’s Folly,” The Conversation, November 29, 2015.
Niels Bohr . . . replied: C. P. Snow, The Physicists, (London: Little, Brown and Co., 1981). Einstein also expresses this idea in: H. Dukas and B. Hoffmann eds., Albert Einstein, The Human Side: Glimpses from His Archives (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1979), 68.
In four straight years: W. Chang et al., “Developing Expert Political Judgment: The Impact of Training and Practice on Judgmental Accuracy in Geopolitical Forecasting Tournaments,” Judgment and Decision Making 11, no. 5 (2016): 509–26.
CHAPTER 11: LEARNING TO DROP YOUR FAMILIAR TOOLS
It was early afternoon in fall: Professor Max Bazerman kindly allowed me to observe the Carter Racing case study at the Harvard Business School over the course of two days in October 2016. (The case study was created in 1986 by Jack W. Brittain and Sim B. Sitkin.)
“professional weakness shared by all”: F. Lighthall, “Launching the Space Shuttle Challenger: Disciplinary Deficiencies in the Analysis of Engineering Data,” IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management 38, no. 1 (1991): 63–74.
Boisjoly’s “away from goodness” quote is from transcripts of the Feb 25, 1986 hearing of the presidential commission.
Boisjoly had personally inspected: R. P. Boisjoly et al. “Roger Boisjoly and the Challenger Disaster,” Journal of Business Ethics 8, no. 4 (1989): 217–230. Boisjoly’s “away from goodness” quote is from transcripts of the Feb 25, 1986 hearing of the presidential commision.
most complex machine ever built: J. M. Logsdon, “Was the Space Shuttle a Mistake?,” MIT Technology Review, July 6, 2011.
McDonald and two Thiokol VPs: Transcripts of presidential commission hearings, which provided information and quotes in this chapter are available at https://history.nasa.gov/rogersrep/genindex.htm. Allan McDonald also gives a fascinating account of the investigation and the return of the shuttle to flight in Truth, Lies, and O-Rings (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2009).
“They said because they had flown”: From Diane Vaughan’s book, which includes a fascinating exploration of “the normalization of deviance” in decision making: The Challenger Launch Decision: Risky Technology, Culture, and Deviance at NASA (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996).
“In God We Trust, All Others Bring Data”: A number of background interviews with current and former NASA managers and engineers—especially during a visit to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in 2017—provided helpful context. NASA’s own APPEL Knowledge Services portal was extremely helpful. It is an incredible repository of information that links to NASA’s voluminous “Lessons Learned System.”
Karl Weick noticed something unusual: K. E. Weick, “The Collapse of Sensemaking in Organizations: The Mann Gulch Disaster,” Administrative Science Quarterly 38, no. 4 (1993): 628–52.; K. E. Weick, “Drop Your Tools: An Allegory for Organizational Studies,” Administrative Science Quarterly 41, no. 2 (1996): 301–13; K. E. Weick, “Drop Your Tools: On Reconfiguring Management Education,” Journal of Management Education 31, no. 1 (2007): 5–16.
eleven feet per second: R. C. Rothermel, “Mann Gulch Fire: A Race That Couldn’t Be Won,” Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Intermountain Research Station, General Technical Report INT-299, May 1993.
wildland firefighters continued to lose races with fires: K. E. Weick, “Tool Retention and Fatalities in Wildland Fire Settings,” in Linking Expertise and Naturalistic Decision Making, ed. E. Salas and G. A. Klein (New York: Psychology Press, 2001 [Kindle ebook]).
“like a jet during take off”: USDA, USDI, and USDC, South Canyon Fire Investigation (Report of the South Canyon Fire Accident Investigation Team), U.S. Government Printing Office, Region 8, Report 573-183, 1994.
“still wearing his backpack”; “then I realized I still had my saw”; twenty-three . . . perished beside them: Weick, “Tool Retention and Fatalities in Wildland Fire Settings.”
grabbed it again in the air; “proxy for unlearning”; “regress to what they know best”; “existential crisis”: Weick, “Drop Your Tools: An Allegory for Organizational Studies.”
“a common pattern”: J. Orasanu and L. Martin, “Errors in Aviation Decision Making,” Proceedings of the HESSD ’98 (Workshop on Human Error, Safety and System Development) (1998): 100–107; J. Orasanu et al., “Errors in Aviation Decision Making,” Fourth Conference on Naturalistic Decision Making, 1998.
“If I make a decision”: Weick, “Tool Retention and Fatalities in Wildland Fire Settings.”
“Between the lines, it suggested”: M. Kohut, “Interview with Bryan O’Connor,” NASA’s ASK (Academy Sharing Knowledge) magazine, issue 45 (January 2012).
“you have to use reason”: transcript, Hearings of the Presidential Commission on the Space Shuttle Challenger Accident Vol. 4, February 25, 1986.
“must have been really hard”: Several members of the 48th Rescue Squadron provided invaluable background and corroboration.
“live in the real world”: C. Grupen, Introduction to Radiation Protection (Berlin: Springer, 2010), 90. Shafer’s entire original message is preserved at https://yarchive.net/air/perfect_safety.html.
But in the first study: K. S. Cameron and S. J. Freeman, “Cultural Congruence, Strength, and Type: Relationships to Effectiveness,” Research in Organizational Change and Development 5 (1991): 23–58.
effective leaders and organizations had range: K. S. Cameron and R. E. Quinn, Diagnosing and Changing Organizational Culture, 3rd Edition (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2011).
In one experiment: S. V. Patil et al., “Accountability Systems and Group Norms: Balancing the Risks of Mindless Conformity and Reckless Deviation,” Journal of Behavioral Decision Making 30 (2017): 282–303.
Gene Kranz: G. Kranz, Failure Is Not an Option (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000). See also: M. Dunn, “Remaking NASA one step at a time,” Associated Press, October 12, 2003.
“Monday Notes”; William Lucas . . . “often grew angry”: S. J. Dick, ed., NASA’s First 50 Years (Washington, DC: NASA, 2011 [ebook]). Also, von Braun’s weekly notes are archived at https://history.msfc.nasa.gov/vonbraun/vb_weekly_notes.html.
“the quality of the notes fell”: R. Launius, “Comments on a Very Effective Communications System: Marshall Space Flight Center’s Monday Notes,” Roger Launius’s Blog, February 28, 2011.
“proper channels”; “stringent and inhibiting”: Columbia Accident Investigation Board, “History as Cause: Columbia and Challenger,” in Columbia Accident Investigation Board Report, vol. 1, August 2003.
Gravity Probe B: Stanford University maintains an archive with copious information (both technical and written for the public) on GP-B, at einstein.stanford.edu. For a scientific deep dive, a special issue of the journal Classical and Quantum Gravity was devoted to GP-B (vol. 32, no. 22 [November 2015]).
technology took twenty years: T. Reichhardt, “Unstoppable Force,” Nature 426 (2003): 380–81.
“was confident that we could succeed”: NASA Case Study, “The Gravity Probe B Launch Decisions,” NASA, Academy of Program/Project and Engineering Leadership.
“a healthy tension in the system”: Geveden also discusses healthy tension in R. Wright et al., eds., NASA at 50: Interviews with NASA’s Senior Leadership (Washington, DC: NASA, 2012).
first direct test: J. Overduin, “The Experimental Verdict on Spacetime from Gravity Probe B,” in Vesselin Petkov, ed., Space, Time, and Spacetime (Berlin: Springer, 2010).
Himalayan mountain climbers: E.M. Anicich et al., “Hierarchical Cultural Values Predict Success and Mortality in High-Stakes Teams,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 112, no. 5 (2015): 1338–43.
“oculostenotic reflex”: Eric Topol is the cardiologist who coined that term. (For a patient who is actually having a heart attack, a stent can be lifesaving.)
one in fifty patients: K. Stergiopoulos and D. L. Brown, “Initial Coronary Stent Implantation With Medical Therapy vs Medical Therapy Alone for Stable Coronary Artery Disease: Meta-analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials,” Archives of Internal Medicine 172, no. 4 (2012): 312–19.
cannot believe that stenting: G. A. Lin et al., “Cardiologists’ Use of Percutaneous Coronary Interventions for Stable Coronary Artery Disease,” Archives of Internal Medicine 167, no. 15 (2007):1604–09.
were less likely to die: A. B. Jena et al., “Mortality and Treatment Patterns among Patients Hospitalized with Acute Cardiovascular Conditions during Dates of National Cardiology Meetings,” JAMA Internal Medicine 175, no. 2 (2015): 237–44. See also: A. B. Jena et al., “Acute Myocardial Infarction during Dates of National Interventional Cardiology Meetings,” Journal of the American Heart Association 7, no. 6 (2018): e008230.
“At large cardiology conventions”: R. F. Redberg, “Cardiac Patient Outcomes during National Cardiology Meetings,” JAMA Internal Medicine 175, no. 2 (2015): 245.
compared the surgery with “sham surgery”: R. Sihvonen et al., “Arthroscopic Partial Meniscectomy Versus Sham Surgery for a Degenerative Meniscal Tear,” New England Journal of Medicine 369 (2013): 2515–24. Hyperlinks to several other studies with supporting findings can be found in: D. Epstein, “When Evidence Says No, But Doctors Say Yes,” ProPublica, February 22, 2017.
CHAPTER 12: DELIBERATE AMATEURS
“Very promising!”: Smithies discussed some of his work and notebook pages in his publicly available Nobel Lecture, “Turning Pages” (December 7, 2007). The University of North Carolina maintains an extraordinary online archive of digitized versions of more than sixty years of Smithies’s notebooks, along with audio recordings of Smithies himself going through them and providing commentary. (Smithies told me that one should always have a notebook, even on Saturday.) The archive was a wonderful resource for interview preparation, and can be found at smithies.lib.unc.edu/notebooks.
A 2016 analysis of ten thousand researchers’ careers: A. Clauset et al., “Data-Driven Predictions in the Science of Science,” Science 355 (2017): 477–80.
had reportedly tested 240,000 compounds: P. McKenna, “Nobel Prize Goes to Modest Woman Who Beat Malaria for China,” New Scientist, November 9, 2011, online ed.
a fourth-century Chinese alchemist: Alchemist and herbalist Ge Hong wrote A Handbook of Prescriptions for Emergencies in the fourth century, during the Jin dynasty. Tu gives background in her Nobel Lecture: “Artemisinin—A Gift from Traditional Chinese Medicine to the World” (December 7, 2015). She shares a photo of a sixteenth-century copy of the handbook in: Y. Tu, “The Discovery of Artemisinin (Qinghaosu) and Gifts from Chinese Medicine,” Nature Medicine 17, no. 10 (2011): 1217–20.
A study on the decline of malaria: Bhatt et al., “The Effect of Malaria Control on Plasmodium falciparum in Africa Between 2000 and 2015,” Nature 526 (2015): 207–11.
the label NBGBOKFO: G. Watts, “Obituary: Oliver Smithies,” Lancet 389 (2017): 1004.
Scotch tape to rip thin layers of graphite: Geim details the discovery in his aptly titled Nobel Lecture, “Random Walk to Graphene” (December 8, 2010). Among the cleverly titled lecture sections: “Zombie Management,” “Better to Be Wrong Than Boring,” and “Legend of Scotch Tape.”
stronger than steel: C. Lee et al., “Measurement of the Elastic Properties and Intrinsic Strength of Monolayer Graphene,” Science 321 (2008): 385–8.
Spiders fed graphene: E. Lepore et al., “Spider Silk Reinforced by Graphene or Carbon Nanotubes,” 2D Materials 4, no. 3 (2017): 031013.
“sufficient scientific advance”: J. Colapinto, “Material Question,” The New Yorker, December 2014, online ed.
“deliberate amateur”; “paradox of innovation”: Sarah Lewis’s fascinating book on creativity: The Rise: Creativity, the Gift of Failure, and the Search for Mastery (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2014).
