November 19, 1999

When to Expect Technological Disasters

To the Editor:

The article "Sociology, Not Engineering, May Explain Our Vulnerability to Technological Disaster," by D.W. Miller (October 15), uses secondhand information that is factually incorrect and leads to a wrong conclusion.

The article quotes Charles Perrow's conclusion that the Three Mile Island nuclear-station accident in 1979 "was not due to equipment failure, or design failure, or operator failure, because no one could anticipate all this.