Skip to main content

To Flop Is Human: Inventing Better Scientific Approaches to Anticipating Failure

Title

To Flop Is Human: Inventing Better Scientific Approaches to Anticipating Failure

Author

Boruch, Robert
Ruby, Alan

Research Area

Methods of Research

Topic

Research Methods ‐ Quantitative

Abstract

Postmortems and autopsies, at the individual and hospital unit levels, are disciplined approaches to learning from medical failures. “Safety factors” that engineers use in designing structures and systems are based on past failures or trials and experiments to find points of failure.

Related Essays

Social Epigenetics: Incorporating Epigenetic Effects as Social Cause and Consequence (Sociology), Douglas L. Anderton and Kathleen F. Arcaro
Repeated Cross-Sections in Survey Data (Methods), Henry E. Brady and Richard Johnston
Ambulatory Assessment: Methods for Studying Everyday Life (Methods), Tamlin S. Conner and Matthias R. Mehl
Models of Nonlinear Growth (Methods), Patrick Coulombe and James P. Selig
Micro-Cultures (Sociology), Gary Alan Fine
Quantile Regression Methods (Methods), Bernd Fitzenberger and Ralf Andreas Wilke
The Evidence-Based Practice Movement (Sociology), Edward W. Gondolf
Meta-Analysis (Methods), Larry V. Hedges and Martyna Citkowicz
The Use of Geophysical Survey in Archaeology (Methods), Timothy J. Horsley
Ethnography in the Digital Age (Methods), Alan Howard and Alexander Mawyer
Participant Observation (Methods), Danny Jorgensen
How Brief Social-Psychological Interventions Can Cause Enduring Effects (Methods), Dushiyanthini (Toni) Kenthirarajah and Gregory M. Walton
Network Research Experiments (Methods), Allen L. Linton and Betsy Sinclair
Longitudinal Data Analysis (Methods), Todd D. Little et al.
Structural Equation Modeling and Latent Variable Approaches (Methods), Alex Liu
Data Mining (Methods), Gregg R. Murray and Anthony Scime
Ethnography: Telling Practice Stories (Methods), Karen O'Reilly
Remote Sensing with Satellite Technology (Archaeology), Sarah Parcak
Quasi-Experiments (Methods), Charles S. Reichard
Digital Methods for Web Research (Methods), Richard Rogers
Virtual Worlds as Laboratories (Methods), Travis L. Ross et al.
Modeling Life Course Structure: The Triple Helix (Sociology), Tom Schuller
Content Analysis (Methods), Steven E. Stemler
Person-Centered Analysis (Methods), Alexander von Eye and Wolfgang Wiedermann
Translational Sociology (Sociology), Elaine Wethington