

After Long Argument, BP Official Made Fatal Decision on Drilling Rig - brlewis
http://www.truthout.org/after-long-argument-bp-official-made-fatal-decision-drilling-rig59875

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brlewis
Engineer fails to persuade executive of danger; disaster follows. I feel like
I've seen this story before.

BP should have had policies in place to prevent executives from violating
known safety procedures. From the article it doesn't sound like there should
have been any controversy.

Clearly the engineer was not at fault here, but people reading this are more
likely to be in the engineer's position than in the BP policymaker's position,
I want to talk about what the engineer could have done better.

It's important to present your views effectively and persuasively, and to know
your audience. For example, for a scientific/engineering audience, it's
important to acknowledge ways you might be wrong, otherwise you aren't
credible. However, for other audiences acknowledging ways you might be wrong
could be taken as a sign you don't hold your opinion strongly. I think the
most concise way of overcoming this mismatch is to flip the uncertainty
around, e.g. "If we follow your plan I can't guarantee this rig won't blow
up."

