A Manifesto for Reality-based Safety Science

David Provan, Hossam Aboelssaad, Rob Alexander and I have just published a new paper in the journal Safety Science. It is part of a special issue looking at the future of the field. The paper presents a set of seven core commitments necessary for improving the quality of safety science research.

For the next fifty days, you can download a copy for free from:

https://authors.elsevier.com/a/1aZCi3IVV9kY7Z

If you’re thinking you might read it sometime, please download and store a copy now while it is free and easy to access.

We put a lot of effort into making the paper readable by anyone, and in return we would ask that you read the actual text, rather than someone’s social media summary or comment about it. If you already agree with us that there is a need for change, feel free to skip the part of the paper that talks about the problems, and jump straight to the commitments themselves. There are only seven, and each one has less than a page of detail.

The conclusion of the paper reads, in part:

The gradient of least effort encourages desktop research based on accident reports, surveys, or blue-sky theorising. The only counter-gradient consists of researchers holding themselves and each other to account.

We conclude this paper with a personal message to you, the reader. If you are a safety researcher, we ask you to take a position on the commitments in this manifesto. If you disagree with them, please feel free to debate them, in public. If you agree with the commitments, please say so, and start holding yourself, and us, to them.

Safety science, as a research field, is in serious trouble. Whilst there are many opportunities for great research, and many incredibly talented young researchers, the field is dominated by foundational problems in research design and execution.

For me, the manifesto is a personal commitment. I stand by all seven commitments. I acknowledge that some of my own past work does not meet the commitments, but I am happy to be called to account if I break them in future.

I encourage anyone who is interested in the quality of safety research to take a position on the commitments. This includes people who are:

• Conducting safety research;
• editing or peer reviewing papers;
• funding research;
• regulating safety; and
• conducting safety work within an organisation.

I particularly hope the paper will be read by Masters or PhD students starting their first big project. If nothing else, the commitments in the manifesto protect against the most common reasons early-career projects in safety fail. I promise that if you try to follow the commitments, you will do better work.