An interesting point. Lead was known to be toxic at the time. Another scientist might have said, “Let’s not pump huge amounts of a known toxin into the air, hmmmm?” thus not making Midgley’s mistake. I guess the question is, does ignoring the toxic nature of lead equal the difference between using metric vs. other measurement systems?
In his state of the union address, George W. Bush cited an alleged attempt by Iraq to obtain yellowcake (a form of uranium) in Nigeria (IIRC) as evidence that Iraq had or was in the process of getting, nukes. This was not a mistake, however … it was a deliberate lie. Valerie Plame’s husband later stated that Cheney had sent him on a mission to investigate the yellowcake story, and that his researches had shown that the story was a fake, most likely made up by the Italian secret service, and that he had reported that to Cheney. But Bush went ahead and cited it ANYWAY in his SOTU address, thus making it a deliberate lie, and a very good reason why Bush and Cheney should be tried for war crimes for starting the Iraq War knowingly under false pretenses.
Right. Not a mistake. The OP is about mistakes.
(I got nothing gainst a nice debate on Bush and WMD and Saddam, but let us take that to GD, hmmm?)
Oh I agree a debate on Bush and WMD would be out of place here, just wanted to make the point that you can’t classify it as a mistake.
I find the semantic difference between whether or not Midgley’s advocacy of lead was a mistake or a bad decision or both more interesting. You could say, “The engineer made a mistake, he used inches where he should have used centimeters, this resulted in his wrong decision to place the blah blah device 1.2 inches away from the blah blah device, instead of 1.2 centimeters.” And you can also say, “Midgley made a mistake, he ignored the toxicity of lead which lead him to make the wrong decision and recommend including it in gasoline.”
But I do kinda see a different between ignoring a factor in a decision that MIGHT turn out badly, vs. getting your numbers off the wrong scale. Just not sure how to distinguish clearly between the two in terms of mistakes and decisions.
Thinking that adding lead to gas/petrol was a good idea when it probably caused a 30-year crime wave across the world?
I made the biggest numerical error I’ve ever heard of, when giving a result to the president of the company I work for. I said a value was 10^105 when it should have been 10^(10^105).
But it wasn’t important, just big.
But you see, he HAD to attack Russia. THE central tenet of the Nazi program was to rid the world of Bolshevism, so it was not a mistake.
‘Worst’ depends on what side of things you’re on, but we just passed the anniversary of a pretty big one. I don’t know enough about Cold War politics to know whether Gunter Schabowski really had all the relevant information the new rules for travel between East and West Berlin, but the answer to ‘when will the Wall be open?’ was certainly not meant to be ‘um… now?’
Chairman Mao’s decision to make the Great Leap Forward, based on two mistakes. First, he believed that forcing almost all Chinese men to work in industry under centralized planning would lead to enormous industrial growth. Second, he believed that taking those men out of agriculture would not lead to a food shortfall.
Net result: a death toll between 30 and 70 million, and no useful industrial production. What other mistake in history could possibly compare?
Well, if Henry the 8th had known that the MALE determines the gender of his offspring, he wouldn’t have blamed his first wife Katherine of Aragon for not giving him any sons, he might not have divorced her, and ENgland might still be Catholic today.
You left out the massive flooding caused by the deforestation that happened as a result of the industrialization drive. But otherwise, spot on.
(I can see Chinese Communists of the time driving around in cars with “Chop Baby Chop” bumper stickers.
I think this is more of a bad decision, rather than a mistake.
This seems to be the issue with this OP. Difference between "mistakes’ as opposed to “decisions”.
As the Op sez "When I posted the OP and gave the example of the Hubble telescope…I was asking about specific mistakes which one person made, for which he alone is responsible, and which at the same moment he made the mistake, he could have corrected, simply by being more careful.;thus preventing terrible results.
I’m not asking about , say, political developments or military decisions which were later found to be wrong, but only due to factors that were unknown at the time the person made the mistake."
Midgley knew what he was doing with regard to leaded gas would be harmful. His Wikipedia page details several efforts to conceal damage and mislead the public. This is more in the nature of “harming people for money” than a mistake or misjudgement.
I think this one complies with the conditions set up in the OP:
The crash of AeroPeru Flight 603 on Oct. 2nd, 1996. Copy-paste from Wikipedia:
“The pilots struggled to navigate the aircraft after the failure of all the plane’s instruments. With the pilots unaware of their true altitude, the plane’s wing hit the water and it crashed shortly afterward. The cause of the instrument failure was a maintenance worker’s failure to remove tape covering the static ports necessary to provide correct instrument data to the cockpit.” (The tape had been placed on the static ports while the aircraft was being cleaned).
This crash also resulted in the eventual demise of AeroPeru in 1999.
JFK insisting he didn’t need to use the bubble-top in Dallas. The head of his security detail agreeing to that decision. He could have overridden POTUS on that. I’m sure the SS guy spent the rest of his career and life eating his heart out over that one.
Mao wins “worst decision” for sure, but sticking to the “mistake” thing:
A really bad one was theHyatt Regency walkway collapse.
114 killed, and 216 injured, all because of a terrible mistake by the architects.
Summary: The architects designed the walkways. The contractors determined that following the design as written was not feasible, and proposed an alternate plan, which was a really bad plan. The major mistake was the architects failing to notice that the contractor’s plan was fatally flawed and signing off on it.
Gimli Glider, son of Gloin Glider!