Recommended – Deadly Decisions

Christopher Burns has written a new book, Deadly Decisions, (see details in the book list on the sidebar) in which he examines how groups of people make erroneous decisions. Reviewing the sinking of the Titanic, the Three Mile Island nuclear incident, the USS Vincennes mistaken attack on an Iranian airliner, the loss of the two space shuttles, the missed signals that the 9/11 attacks were coming, the collapse of Enron, the incorrect intelligence about Saddam Hussain’s supposed weapons of mass destruction, and a number of other recent disasters, he tries to explain how organizations full of supposedly very intelligent people so often find themselves led to incorrect decisions by a combination of human mental habits, organizational expectations, and an inability to detect or recognize bad data.

Well worth reading