12 Saturday, July 31, 2010

science&technology

learning through Failure

Disasters teach more than suc-
cesses.
While that idea may sound para-
doxical, it is widely accepted among
engineers. They say grim lessons
arise because the
reasons for triumph
william j. in matters of technol-
ogy are often arbi-
broad trary and invisible,
whereas the cause of
essay
a particular failure
can frequently be
uncovered, documented and re-
worked to make improvements.
Disaster, in short, can become a
spur to innovation.
There is no question that the
trial-and-error process of building
machines and industries has, over
the centuries, resulted in the loss of
much blood and many thousands
of lives.
Failures, sometimes appalling,
are inevitable, and engineers say
it pays to make good use of them to
prevent future mistakes. The result
is that the technological feats that
define the modern world are some-
times the result of events that some
might wish to forget.
“It’s a great source of knowledge
— and humbling, too — sometimes
that’s necessary,” said Henry Pet-
roski, a historian of engineering
at Duke University and author of
“Success Through Failure.” “No-
body wants failures. But you also
don’t want to let a good crisis go to
waste.”
Now, experts say, that kind of
analysis will probably improve the
complex gear and procedures that
companies use to drill for oil in in-
creasingly deep waters.
They say the catastrophic failure
involving the Deepwater Horizon
oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico on April
20 — which took 11 lives and started
the worst offshore oil spill in United
States history — will drive the tech-
nological progress.
“The industry knows it can’t have
that happen again,” said David W.
Fowler, a professor at the Univer-
sity of Texas, Austin, who teaches
a course on forensic engineering.
“It’s going to make sure history
doesn’t repeat itself.”
Disaster, never
desirable, often
sparks innovation.
In London on June 22 at the World
National Oil Companies Congress,
protesters from Greenpeace inter-
rupted an official from BP, the com-
pany that dug the runaway well.
Planetary responsibility, a pro-
tester shouted before being taken
away, “means stopping the push for
dangerous drilling in deep waters.”
The history of technology sug-
gests that such an end is unlikely.
Devices fall out of favor, but seldom
if ever get abolished by design.
The explosion of the Hindenburg
showed the dangers of hydrogen as
a lifting gas and resulted in new em-
phasis on helium, which is not flam-
mable, rather than ending the reign
of rigid airships. And engineering,
by definition, is a problem-solving
profession. Technology analysts
say that constructive impulse, and
its probable result for deep ocean
drilling, is that innovation through
failure analysis will make the
wells safer, whatever the merits
of reducing human reliance on oil.
They hold that the BP disaster will
ultimately inspire technological
advance.
From the sinking of the Titanic
to the meltdown of the Chernobyl
reactor in 1986, from the collapse
of Washington’s Tacoma Narrows
Bridge in 1940 to the World Trade
Center’s fall in 2001— all forced en-
gineers to address what came to be
seen as deadly flaws.
Design engineers say that, too
frequently, the nature of their pro-
fession is to fly blind.
Eric H. Brown, a British engineer
who developed aircraft during
World War II and afterward taught
at Imperial College London, can-
didly described the predicament.
In a 1967 book, he called structural
engineering “the art of molding
materials we do not really under-
stand into shapes we cannot really
analyze, so as to withstand forces
we cannot really assess, in such a
way that the public does not really
suspect.”
Dr. Petroski, at Duke, writing in
“Success Through Failure,” noted
the innovative corollary. Failures,
he said, “always teach us more than
the successes about the design of
tIMEs wIdE world photos
things. And thus the failures often
lead to redesigns — to new, im- the 1937 hindenburg crash placed a new emphasis on helium in
proved things.” airships, rather than using flammable hydrogen.

When Adults Have Attention a computer game.

They may feel they
have no choice but
that each contained a single task,
sorted in order of priority. It’s a sub-
tle switch, she says, but surprisingly

Disorders, Spouses Seethe to constantly nag

By TARA PARKER-POPE
Does your husband or wife con-
stantly forget chores and lose track
of the calendar? Do you sometimes
feel that instead of living with a
spouse, you’re raising another
child?
Your marriage may be suffering
from attention deficit hyperactivity
disorder.
An A.D.H.D. marriage? It may
sound like a punch line, but the idea
that attention problems can take a
toll on adult relationships is getting
more attention from mental health
experts. In a marriage, the common
symptoms of the disorder — distrac-
tion, disorganization, forgetfulness
— can easily be misinterpreted as
laziness, selfishness and a lack of
love and concern.
Experts suggest that at least 4
percent of adults suffer from the
disorder; that as many as half of all
children with A.D.H.D. do not fully
outgrow it and continue to struggle
with symptoms as adults; and that
many adults with the disorder never
got the diagnosis as children.
Adults with attention disorders of-
ten learn coping skills to help them
stay organized and focused at work,
but experts say many of them strug-
gle at home, where their tendency
to become distracted is a constant
source of conflict. Some research
suggests that these adults are twice
as likely to be divorced; another
study found high levels of distress in
60 percent of marriages where one
spouse has the disorder.
Melissa Orlov, author of the new
book “The A.D.H.D. Effect on Mar-
riage,” to be published in Septem-
ber, says she became interested in
the topic after her husband got the
diagnosis about five years ago. Al-
though she had been working for
years with Dr. Ned Hallowell, a
leading researcher on the subject,
Ms. Orlov had not realized that the
disorder was also ruining her mar-
riage.
“I felt like he was consistently in-
consistent,” she said in an interview.
“I could never count on him It goes
from feeling responsible for every-
thing to just chronic anger. I didn’t
like the person I’d become either.”
(They are now happily married, she
added.)
Complaints that a husband or wife
is inconsiderate and inattentive, or
doesn’t help enough around the
house, are hardly limited to mar-
riages in which one or both part-
ners have attention problems. But
A.D.H.D. can make matters worse.
It can leave one spouse with 100
percent of the family responsibility,
because the other spouse forgets to
pick children up from school or pay
bills on time. Partners without at-
tention problems may feel ignored
or unloved when their husband or
wife becomes distracted — or, in
another symptom of the disorder,
hyperfocused on a work project or
to make sure things
get done.
Spouses w it h
attention deficit,
mea nwhile, a re
often unaware of
their latest mis-
take, confused by
t hei r pa r t ner’s
simmering anger.
stuart bradford A lengthy to-do list
or a messy house
feels overwhelming to the A.D.H.D.
brain, causing the person to retreat
to a computer or a video game — fur-
ther infuriating the partner.
“It’s not because they’re lazy or
they don’t love their spouse, but
because they are distracted,” Ms.
Orlov said.
“But if you don’t know that dis-
traction is the issue, you start to
think the person doesn’t care about
you, and anger and resentment build
up.”
Although treatment often starts
with medication, it typically doesn’t
solve a couple’s problems. Behav-
ioral therapy and coping strategies
— for both partners — are essential;
for instance, Ms. Orlov would ban-
ish long to-do lists in favor of cards
effective.
One of the biggest challenges is for
both spouses to accept the very real
toll an attention disorder can take.
Often the partner without A.D.H.D.
worries that the diagnosis will give
the other partner an excuse for not
helping; meanwhile, that partner
typically has a hard time under-
standing how his or her behavior
affects others.
“Initially I think I was a bit of a
skeptic about A.D.H.D. in general,”
said a 52-year-old man from Cleve-
land whose wife recently received
a diagnosis. He described a life of
“crushing responsibility,” of work-
ing full time, caring for his children
and his wife.
“After years of this, I felt I didn’t
have two children, I had three chil-
dren and no one to help,” he said. “I
was always the one who said, ‘No,
we can’t do that,’ or ‘Get this done.’ I
had to be sort of a nag.”
On the brink of divorce, the wife
found Ms. Orlov and Dr. Hallowell’s
Web site, adhdmarriage.com, and
began consulting with Ms. Orlov.
“It’s been a revelation,” the wife
said. “I didn’t realize what a critical
piece the A.D.H.D. has been in my
marriage.’’