Normalization of deviance

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Benji
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Normalization of deviance

Post by Benji »

​I learned a new phrase yesterday which describes a concept I had always understood (I suspect most of us do in some form or another) but never had a term for. "Normalization of deviance", is when an individual or group becomes accustomed to a deviation (breaking a rule, circumventing a process, stretching the truth, getting used to a problem or symptom, etc.) so that it eventually seems normal and not deviant.

It was coined by a sociologist who studied NASA's culture after Challenger and wrote a book, The Challenger Launch Decision, describing how NASA management had become so comfortable with the issues with the O-rings (there had been problems with imperfect seals and bubbles from the beginning of the program) that they pooh-poohed the concerns of the Morton-Thiokol engineers over the launch temperature.

Anyway, I thought that the concept and phrase were interesting and wanted to share. It's something that I think we should all be aware of, especially if you work in a high-stakes organization.
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Re: Normalization of deviance

Post by p51 »

It's really common in government work and way common in the military. Anyone here who ever served one day in uniform will back me up on that point.
I couldn't possibly list all the things I saw done that weren't really authorized (or even legal) in the Army but were SOP anyway. I was ordered to do all kinds of screwy things that on paper they "couldn't" do, yet they did every day.
Once I was old enough to truly understand how the STS-51L incident occurred, I wasn't the least bit shocked.
And make no mistake, that kind of thing kept happening at NASA (and some would stay still happens today). Just look into the findings on the STS-107 foam strike and how it'd occurred more than once before* and you'll see that in some ways, our favorite space agency didn't learn a thing...


*If you ever encounter Hoot at SC, ask him about the foam strike on STS-27. He and some of the crew were convinced they were probably going to die on re-entry as they knew how bad that strike was but nobody at Houston understood, due to bad imagining of the strike area itself. One whole underside tile was gone during re-entry.
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Re: Normalization of deviance

Post by Boomerang »

I remember reading "The Challenger Launch Decision" many years ago and that term. I've studied the Challenger accident for a long time and later the Apollo 1 and Columbia as well. I'd say the normalization of deviance can be applied in all three cases. NASA came to accept things for expediency and budgetary reasons and sadly people paid the ultimate price. If you want to really see just how deep this culture was in the Challenger case read the book "Truth Lies and O-rings" it was written by one of the lead Thiokol engineers who opposed the launch and ultimately was ordered to sign off on the recommendation to launch as he was the Thiokol manager at the cape the night before launch. A signature he said hed never been required to give before that flight. He also goes into the evidence leading up to the concerns that night and how it had simply become a maintenance of flight issue instead of a launch concern. I will warn you if you read the book you may never look at NASA quite the same way.

As for STS-27 that was sheer luck we didn't lose Atlantis on that flight. One well placed reinforcement plate that happened to be in that same location is all that likely saved the shuttle program. Considering STS-27 was only the second flight after Challenger a loss in my opinion would have ended the shuttle program.
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