Why we make mistakes…the wandering continues

Why We Make Mistakes by Joseph Hallinan

The continued wanderings of a newly minted librarian

 

Hallinan, J. T. (2009). Why we make mistakes. New York: Broadway Books.

 

Hallinan’s Why We Make Mistakes is a frightening and yet entertaining book. Some of the examples and statistics of medical mistakes and the statistics of weapons that get past bagage screeners are truly scarey.  Hallinan looks at radiologists and baggage screeners both jobs which require one to scan for things (guns, bombs, cancer) which most of the time will not be found. The way we work, it is harder for us to find something when it doesn’t show up often.

“… [in one study] doctors at the Mayo Clinic went back and checked the previous ‘normal’ chest X-rays of patients who subsequently developed lung cancer. What they found was horrifying; up to 90 percent of the tumors were visible in the previous X-rays. Not only that, the researchers noted, the cancers were visible ‘for months or even years.’ The radiologists had simply missed them.” (Hallinan, 2009, p.24).

Apparently the government wont release the miss rate of bagage screeners but:

“…a test in 2002 indicated that they missed about one in four guns. During a similar test two years later at Newark’s airport, the failure rate was nearly identical: 25 percent. More recently, 60 percent of bomb materials and explosives hidden in carry-on items by undercover agents from TSA were missed in 2006 by screeners at Chicago’s O’hare International Airport. At Los Angeles International Airport, the results were even worse: screeners mised 75 percnet of bomb materials” (Hallinan, 2009, p. 24).

Hallinan points out how bad multitasking is. Doing anything while driving (besides watching the road and driving) raises the chances of being in a collision. Yet modern cars are equipped with so many bells and whistles that require the driver to take their eyes off the road in order to opperate them. Multi tasking at work does not save time. We can’t really do two things at once, when we multi task we generally go from one thing to another and then back. The break in concentration is more disruptive… once you have been interupted in a task it takes 15 minutes or so to get back into the groove of concentration for optimum performance. It would be less time consuming to complete one task and then move on to the next, but of course the buzz word around offices and corporations is multi tasking.

Basically, we make mistakes because we are over-confident and we are biased. Unless we compensate for those things, they will cause mistakes. One neat comparison made by Hallinan was between an operating room in a hospital and a cockpit of an airplane. Both spaces have teams of people working for one cause (either a successful operation or a successful flight and landing). However, mistakes made by pilots have been drastically cut because the FAA has made regulations which eliminate some of the sever hierarchy. The pilot is no longer the supreme comander who controls everything. Every person in the cockpit is supposed to speak up whenever they see something that isn’t right. This is confirmed by pilots themselves—they expect the others to speak up and welcome it. This saves lives. In the operating room the head surgon is usually the supreme commander and can overide what anyone else says. Many surgical staff say they would not speak up because they would not be listened to. Mistakes have been recorded when a training surgon trys to do something and is “corrected” by the supervising surgon. When the trainee speaks up and says they think they are right and the “correction” is wrong, they are shot down. People die.

In order to reduce some of the mistakes that are made, we need to look at why the mistake is made. Rather than looking “down” to who was the last person to interact with the patient or the last person to inspect an airplane, we need to look “up” the chain and see what rules or other circumstances were involved. Hallinan gives the example of mass overdoses of medicine given in a hospital. The overdoses were given multiple times and by different nurses. The problem wasn’t really the nurses, the problem was the two strenghths of this medication looked almost identical and were easily (and often) mixed up. The solution is to make the differences obvious (different colored lables, different shaped dispenser, etc).

This is a fascinating book on how our minds work and what we can do to help reduce our mistakes.

 

Intelligence and how to get it … the continued wanderings

Intelligence and how to get it: Why schools and cultures count

The continued wanderings of a newly minted librarian

 

Nisbett, R. E. (2009). Intelligence and how to get it: Why schools and cultures count. New York: W.W. Norton & Co.

 

Nisbett is currently the Theodore M. Newcomb Distinguished University Professor at the University of Michigan as well as the Co-director of the Culture and Cognition Program. From 1966-1971 he was an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Yale University. In 1966 he earned his Ph.D from the Department of Social Psychology at Columbia University. He has numerous professional honors and has published several books and articles on the topics of inference, thought, learning, and reasoning.

In Intelligence and how we get it, Nisbett examines the idea of intelligence and debunks the idea that it is wholly a matter of genetics and inheritance. While the book is designed for the lay person, Nisbett includes appendices with the statistics and various studies that he mentions which would be of interest to professionals in the field.

Nisbett examines the racial differences in IQ between blacks and whites in the United States, the IQ differences between Ashkenazi Jews and non-Jews, and the academic achievements of Asians and Asian Americans compared with Americans of European roots. In all cases he makes the point that the differences in IQ test scores and achievements is NOT due to inherited genes. He makes a very strong case for the cultural differences of people in lower socio-economic statuses (lower SES), and the differences that cultural values can make in young students.

If you try harder you will gain knowledge and do better on tests and achieve more. However, it helps to have parents who prepare you has an infant to do well in school (talk to you, play games with you, read to you and show you how to relate what is read with what you see in the world around you). Then it helps to go to a good or at least average school. Smaller class sizes do help (especially with disadvantaged youth) and a good first grade teacher can make all the difference in the world.

Nisbett examines different preschool programs and innovative school reforms and describes what has worked and what hasn’t and some of the reasons. He does state that there is a lot of research that still needs to be done. However, he does give ideas for what parents can do to help increase their child’s intelligence and academic performance. Also included are examples of what a good tutor should and should not do. It is better to praise a student for hard work rather than praising them for their intelligence or academic ability. If they are praised for hard work, they will continue to work hard and will actually learn more and do better. If they are praised for their intellectual ability they will tend to choose easier tests or subjects and worry about keeping up the image of being smart – they don’t want to risk not looking smart so they won’t take on challenges.

Another interesting idea is to NOT offer a reward for doing something you want the child to continue to do (unless of course they completely refuse to do it at all). In studies done children were given markers to color with. Then part of the group were offered a reward for coloring with markers and the other part were just given the opportunity to color with markers again. Surprisingly the group who were offered a reward if they colored with markers actually colored less and did a worse job (less creative in their drawings than previously etc.). The group without the reward did much more coloring. So the lesson is, if the child is interested in doing something that you want to encourage them to continue doing, DON’T give a reward for it, give them lots of praise for doing it instead.

All in all this is a very interesting book that gives us hope that our educational system can be revamped and saved. However, it will take lots of work and those in power to change things in the bureaucratic nightmare of the U.S. educational system should read this book and try some of the ideas. Our brains are malleable and those children in the worst socio-economic states have the most to gain with even simple things such as being read to and talked to more. Those cultures which value intellectual achievement tend to overachieve because they try harder as children and have adults that encourage them to work hard and provide them with the tools to succeed.