E236 - Normalization of Deviance: The Challenger Disaster and How Shop Standards Drift [E236]

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Matt Fanslow revisits the Challenger disaster, not just as a historical tragedy, but as a case study in how standards, tolerances, and risk perception can shift over time. The common simplified story is that management ignored engineers, pushed the launch forward, and disaster followed. While that is part of the story, Matt looks at the deeper concept sociologist Diane Vaughan identified: normalization of deviance.

The Challenger disaster happened 73 seconds after launch in 1986, killing all seven astronauts onboard. The...