Perrow argued that “normal accidents” were nearly inevitable in a complex, tightly coupled system. To resist such an outcome, systems designers needed to have backups and redundancy, safety checks and maintenance.

One interesting concept in organizational sociology is “normal accidents theory.” Studying Three Mile Island, Charles Perrow created a 2x2 grid

In her 2002 dissertation, and then in a series of articles published in medicaljournals, Pape made a case for imitating this practice. “The key to preventingmedication errors lies with adopting protocols from other safety-focusedindustries,” Pape wrote in the journal MEDSURG Nursing in 2003. “The airlineindustry, for example, has methods in place that improve pilots’ focus andprovide a milieu of safety when human life is at stake.”

aviation experts haddevised a solution to the problem of pilot interruption: the “sterile cockpit rule.”Instituted by the Federal Aviation Administration in 1981, the rule forbids pilotsfrom engaging in conversation unrelated to the immediate business of flyingwhen the plane is below ten thousand feet.

He also quotes another scientist, who speaks of "controlled sloppiness" as a principle that "permits the occurrence of fruitful accidents", tracing this idea to the fact that scientific work is never without loose ends and that in the absence of a rigid plan it is possible to pay attention to the untidy ends, which ultimately "may turn out to be of considerable importance." Indeed, "compulsive tidiness in experimentation" may be even more crippling than in other areas of life (193).

The role of accidents in the theory of science is not disputed, If you employ evolutionary models, accidents assume a most important role. Without them, nothing happens, no progress is made. Without variation in the given material of ideas, there are no possibilities of examining and selecting novelties. The real problem thus becomes therefore one of producing accidents with sufficiently enhanced probabilities for selection.

person.