• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

Safety Risk .net

Humanising Safety and Embracing Real Risk

  • Home
    • About
      • Privacy Policy
      • Contact
  • FREE RESOURCES
    • FREE SAFETY eBOOKS
    • FREE DOWNLOADS
    • TOP 50
    • FREE RISK ASSESSMENT FORMS
    • Find a Safety Consultant
    • Free Safety Program Documents
    • Psychology Of Safety
    • Safety Ideas That Work
    • HEALTH and SAFETY MANUALS
    • FREE SAFE WORK METHOD STATEMENT RESOURCES
    • Whats New In Safety
    • FUN SAFETY STUFF
    • Health and Safety Training
    • SAFETY COURSES
    • Safety Training Needs Analysis and Matrix
    • Top 20 Safety Books
    • This Toaster Is Hot
    • Free Covid-19 Toolbox Talks
    • Download Page – Please Be Patient With Larger Files…….
    • SAFETY IMAGES, Photos, Unsafe Pictures and Funny Fails
    • How to Calculate TRIFR, LTIFR and Other Health and Safety Indicators
    • Download Safety Moments from Human Resources Secretariat
  • PSYCHOLOGY OF SAFETY & RISK
    • Safety Psychology Terminology
    • Some Basics on Social Psychology & Risk
    • Understanding The Social Psychology of Risk – Prof Karl E. Weick
    • The Psychology of Leadership in Risk
    • Conducting a Psychology and Culture Safety Walk
    • The Psychology of Conversion – 20 Tips to get Started
    • Understanding The Social Psychology of Risk And Safety
    • Psychology and safety
    • The Psychology of Safety
    • Hot Toaster
    • TALKING RISK VIDEOS
    • WHAT IS SAFETY
    • THE HOT TOASTER
    • THE ZERO HARM DEBATE
    • SEMIOTICS
    • LEADERSHIP
  • Covid-19
    • COVID-19 (Coronavirus, Omicron) Health and Safety Slogans and Quotes for the Workplace
    • Covid-19 Returning to Work Inductions, Transitioning, Safety Start Up and Re Entry Plans
    • Covid-19 Work from Home Safety Checklists and Risk Assessments
    • The Hierarchy of Control and Covid-19
    • Why Safety Loves Covid-19
    • Covid-19, Cricket and Lessons in Safety
    • The Covid-19 Lesson
    • Safety has this Covid-19 thing sorted
    • The Heart of Wisdom at Covid Time
    • How’s the Hot Desking Going Covid?
    • The Semiotics of COVID-19 and the Social Amplification of Risk
    • Working From Home Health and Safety Tips – Covid-19
    • Covid-19 and the Hierarchy of Control
  • Dr Rob Long Posts
    • Learning Styles Matter
    • There is no HIERARCHY of Controls
    • Scaffolding, Readiness and ZPD in Learning
    • What Can Safety Learn From Playschool?
    • Presentation Tips for Safety People
    • Dialogue Do’s and Don’ts
    • It’s Only a Symbol
    • Ten Cautions About Safety Checklists
    • Zero is Unethical
    • First Report on Zero Survey
    • There is No Objectivity, Deal With it!
  • Quotes & Slogans
    • Researchers Reveal the Top 10 Most Effective Safety Slogans Of All Time
    • When Slogans Don’t Work
    • 77 OF THE MOST CLASSIC, FAMOUS and INFAMOUS SAFETY QUOTES
    • 500 BEST and WORST WORKPLACE HEALTH and SAFETY SLOGANS 2021
    • 167 CATCHY and FUNNY SAFETY SLOGANS FOR THE WORKPLACE
    • COVID-19 (Coronavirus, Omicron) Health and Safety Slogans and Quotes for the Workplace
    • Safety Acronyms
    • You know Where You Can Stick Your Safety Slogans
    • Sayings, Slogans, Aphorisms and the Discourse of Simple
    • Spanish Safety Slogans – Consignas de seguridad
    • Safety Slogans List
    • Road Safety Slogans
    • How to write your own safety slogans
    • Why Are Safety Slogans Important
    • Safety Slogans Don’t Save Lives
    • 40 Free Safety Slogans For the Workplace
    • Safety Slogans for Work
You are here: Home / Robert Long / Censorship in Safety

Censorship in Safety

February 4, 2019 by Dr Rob Long Leave a Comment

Censorship in Safety

imageOne doesn’t have to look hard to find censorship in the safety industry. Simply look at what vocabulary and semiotics are available to the industry and what is suppressed and there is the evidence. Similarly, look at the propaganda, smoke and mirrors, taboos and rituals and, censorship is easy to find. For example, go anywhere in the industry and look for key words like: fallibility, learning, helping and unconscious and they are very hard to find. It is in the best interests of the zero ideologues to be silent on such words. It’s pretty difficult to have the word ‘fallible’ in your vocabulary and maintain the nonsense language of zero. The insurance industry exists because of the reality of fallibility whereas, the safety industry lives in denial.

Similarly, search for words like: compliance, vigilance, policing, complacency and punishment and you will be overloaded with the favourite language of safety. Trawl through conferences, policy documents, standards and media and discover what Safety talks about. Research what are the common images of Safety and calculate the percentage focused on objects.

Censorship never works by edict or regulation. It works unconsciously by indoctrination, repetition, propaganda and silence. Take for example the preoccupation with the word ‘professional’ in the safety industry. There is no more spruiked word in the industry that the word ‘professional’. Indeed, its excessive use clearly demonstrates an obsession with not being professional. Propaganda works under the formula that if you say something often enough then it must be true. However, you won’t find any in-depth research or definition in the safety industry about what it means to be professional. There is no ethic of safety in the safety industry.

So, let’s have a look at the SIA BoK OHS Risk and Decision Making , and see how the industry censors knowledge:

  1. There is only one mention of the word ‘unconscious’ in the text and even then it misunderstands what the unconscious is.
  2. In the same text there is no mention of the word ‘fallible’ indeed, no definition of how humans make decisions. How strange in a work on Human Decision Making.

  3. The word ‘heuristic’ is used once and only three cognitive biases are discussed as if heuristics are not the major mode of decision making.

  4. The word ‘anthropology’ doesn’t appear in the text neither is the word ‘learning’ defined.

  5. There is no discussion at all of how social arrangements affect decision making nor any discussion of critical social psychological factors determine decisions. (Social context is not social psychology)

  6. Interestingly, the SIA BoK OHS Risk and Decision Making has no concept of personhood but rather assumes a behaviourist-cognitivist approach to human thinking. Poor old safety locked in the same old paradigm with no access to a transdisciplinary approach to human personhood.

  7. The list of key thinkers still has a focus on the binary model of Kahneman with only one mention of Wilson’s obscure text on the unconscious. Indeed, in the references most of the scholars of importance in human decision making are not there. Oh but yes, plenty of the old favourites in safety orthodoxy.

  8. There is no discussion or mention of the concept of semiotics (how signs and symbols affect decision making), semiosis (meaning in decision making), motivation, the psychology of perception, antifragility, psychology of goals or homeostasis. It is in the best interests of zero to be silent on all these. Otherwise one cannot maintain the masquerade of cognitivist-behaviourist blame and punitive discourse.

  9. The cognitivist-behaviourist assumptions of the text have decision making locked into the human brain, with no concept of all of how the mind works or any mention at all of the ‘embodied’ mind or any of the latest research from neuroscience about decision making. Poor old safety tied to 1930s models of decision making with humans as rats in a cage (https://safetyrisk.net/95120-2/).

  10. There is no mention in the text of the many critical social psychological realities in decision making that are well known like: diffusion of responsibility (by-stander effect), Stanford Prison Experiments, the work of Zimbardo (Lucifer Effect), Authoritarian Personality, Milgrim’s experiments on obedience, social politics, automaticity, belief congruence, binary opposition, bounded rationality (Herbert Simon), cognitive dissonance (Festinger), the nature of faith-belief, day-dreaming, enactment, priming, framing, definition of habit or habituation, implicit knowledge (Polanyi), mimetics or reciprocal determinism. Hmmm, quite a list.

Indeed, there is so much missing from the text about Human Judgement and Decision Making that it could at best be described as a ‘Body of Quarter Knowledge’. Yet, the word ‘professional’ occurs at least 25 times.

The SIA BoK OHS Risk and Decision Making is a perfect example of how censorship works in safety.

  • Bio
  • Latest Posts
  • More about Rob
Dr Rob Long

Dr Rob Long

Expert in Social Psychology, Principal & Trainer at Human Dymensions
Dr Rob Long

Latest posts by Dr Rob Long (see all)

  • Culture Silences in Safety The Collective Unconscious - May 21, 2022
  • Culture Silences in Safety Artefacts - May 20, 2022
  • Culture Silences in Safety Symbolism - May 19, 2022
  • Culture Silences in Safety Mythology - May 16, 2022
  • The Safety Trifecta and Nothing Changes - May 14, 2022
Dr Rob Long
PhD., MEd., MOH., BEd., BTh., Dip T., Dip Min., Cert IV TAA, MRMIA Rob is the founder of Human Dymensions and has extensive experience, qualifications and expertise across a range of sectors including government, education, corporate, industry and community sectors over 30 years. Rob has worked at all levels of the education and training sector including serving on various post graduate executive, post graduate supervision, post graduate course design and implementation programs.

Please share our posts

  • Click to print (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)

Related

Filed Under: Robert Long, Social Psychology of Risk Tagged With: censorship, decision making, sia, sia bok

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

Search and Discover More on this Site

Visit Count – Started Jan 2015

  • 24,011,250 Visitors

Never miss a post - Subscribe via Email

Enter your email address and join other discerning risk and safety people who receive notifications of new posts by email

Join 7,422 other subscribers

NEW! Free Download

How we pay for the high cost of running of this site – try it for free on your site

Please take our 2 minute zero survey

Recent Comments

  • Roel on Free Workplace Health and Safety Downloads
  • Rob Long on Safety Silences – Video Series
  • BRENT R CHARLTON on Safety Silences – Video Series
  • Rob Long on Sleep Dysfunction, Dreaming and Safety
  • Rob Long on Working Out What Makes Sense in Safety
  • simon cassin on Working Out What Makes Sense in Safety
  • Rob Long on The Safety Trifecta and Nothing Changes
  • Aneta Parker on The Safety Trifecta and Nothing Changes
  • Rob Long on How to Tackle Risk You Can’t See
  • Andrew Thornhill on How to Tackle Risk You Can’t See

FREE eBOOK DOWNLOADS

Featured Downloads

  • Public-Event-Risk-Management-Checklist-HD.doc (3737 downloads)
  • Professional-Challenges-for-the-Safety-Industry (19550 downloads)
  • Task Risk Assessment Template (1808 downloads)
  • Tunneling Risk Assessment (1458 downloads)
  • Manual Handling Risk Assessment Template (1707 downloads)
  • WorkSafe_inspectors_guide_FINAL.pdf (1026 downloads)
  • Hazardous Substances Risk Assessment Form (1740 downloads)
  • Safety Moments - General Collection (8287 downloads)
  • covid–19: Identifying the symptoms (6677 downloads)
  • Amusement Devices Risk Assessment (2304 downloads)
  • SAFETY-SLOGANS-LIST.doc (8529 downloads)
  • Vehicle Visual Inspection (9190 downloads)
  • What_it_means_to_be_an_OHS_professional (9026 downloads)
  • Seven-Essential-Safety-Reminders.pdf (1773 downloads)
  • Presenting-Dos-and-Donts.pdf (1104 downloads)

Recent Posts

  • Culture Silences in Safety The Collective Unconscious
  • Culture Silences in Safety Artefacts
  • Culture Silences in Safety Symbolism
  • Culture Silences in Safety Mythology
  • The Safety Trifecta and Nothing Changes
  • Sleep Dysfunction, Dreaming and Safety
  • Working Out What Makes Sense in Safety
  • How to Tackle Risk You Can’t See
  • Study Reveals an Unexpected Side Effect of Traffic Safety Messages
  • Human Factors is Never About Humans

What is Psychological Safety at Work?

Footer

Subscribe to Blog via Email

Enter your email address and join other discerning risk and safety people who receive notifications of new posts by email

Join 7,422 other subscribers

AUTHORS

  • Alan Quilley
    • Heinrich–Industrial Accident Prevention
    • The Problem With ZERO Goals and Results
  • Bernard Corden
    • After the goldrush
    • The Internationale
  • Bill Sims
    • Employee Engagement: Chocolate, Vanilla, or Strawberry?
    • Injury Hiding-How do you stop it?
  • Craig Clancy
    • Task Based vs Activity Based Safe Work Method Statements
    • Safety And Tender Submissions
  • Daniel Kirk
    • It’s easy being wise after the event.
    • A Positive Safety Story
  • Dave Whitefield
    • Safety is about…
    • Safety and Compliance
  • Dennis Millard
    • Are You Risk Intelligent?
    • Honey they get me! They get me at work!
  • Drewie
    • Downturn Doin’ Your Head In? Let’s Chat….
    • How was your break?
  • Gabrielle Carlton
    • All Care and No Care!
    • You Are Not Alone!
  • George Robotham
    • How to Give an Unforgettable Safety Presentation
    • How To Write a Safety Report
  • Goran Prvulovic
    • Safety Manager – an Ultimate Scapegoat
    • HSE Performance – Back to Basics
  • James Ellis
    • Psychological Core Stability for Wellbeing in Workers Comp
    • In search of plan B in workers’ recovery
  • James Parkinson
    • To laugh or not to laugh
    • People and Safety
  • John Toomey
    • In it for The Long Haul – Making the most of the FIFO Lifestyle
    • Who is Responsible for This?
  • Karl Cameron
    • Abby Normal Safety
    • The Right Thing
  • Ken Roberts
    • Safety Legislation Is Our Biggest Accident?
    • HSE Trip Down Memory Lane
  • Mark Perrett
    • Psychology of Persuasion: Top 5 influencing skills for getting what you want
  • Mark Taylor
    • Build a Psychologically Safe Workplace by Taking Risks and Analysing Failures
    • Enculturing Safety
  • Max Geyer
    • WHS Legislation is NOT about Safety it’s about Culture
    • Due Diligence Is Not Just Ticking Boxes!
  • Matt Thorne
    • Safety Culture–Hudson’s Model
    • Culture – Edgar Schein
  • Peter Ribbe
    • Is there “Common Sense” in safety?
    • Who wants to be a safety professional?
  • Phil LaDuke
    • Professional Conferences Are A Sleazy Con
    • Hey Idiots, You’re Worried About the Wrong Things
  • Admin
    • Study Reveals an Unexpected Side Effect of Traffic Safety Messages
    • Humanising Leadership in Risk, Shifting the Focus from Objects to Persons
  • Dr Rob Long
    • Culture Silences in Safety The Collective Unconscious
    • Culture Silences in Safety Artefacts
  • Rob Sams
    • The Learning (and unlearning) that Revealed my Vocation
    • I’m just not that into safety anymore
  • Barry Spud
    • Things To Consider When Developing And Designing Your Company SWMS
    • Bad Safety Photos
  • Sheri Suckling
    • How Can I Get the Boss to Listen?
  • Simon Cassin
    • Safety values, ideas, behaviours and clothes
  • Safety Nerd
    • The Block isn’t portraying safety as it should be
    • Toolbox Talk Show–PPE
  • Wynand Serfontein
    • Why The Problem With Learning Is Unlearning
    • I DON’T KNOW
  • Zoe Koskinas
    • Why is fallibility so challenging in the workplace?

Most commented on

Forecasting Safety

The Banned Objects Index – A New Development in Safety Culture

The Unconscious and the Soap Dispenser

Dumbs for Safety

The Real Barriers to Safety

Safety as Faith Healing

Who Said We Don’t Need Systems?

Why Safety Controls Don’t Always Work

How to use signs, symbols and text effectively in communicating about risk

Safety Should NOT Be About Safety

FEATURED POSTS

Risky Conversations – Free Download

Hoarding as a Psychosis Against Uncertainty

No Gurus, No Stars, No Heroes Needed in Safety

Learning Styles Matter

Making Sense of Semiotics and Safety

The Illusion Of Opposites

The Disembodied Human and Persons in Safety

Semiotics and Safety

Human Factors Factors

In Honour of George Robotham and Geoff McDonald

The Safety Cacophony Cupboard

A Better Language for Risk and Safety

The Safety Charade as Tokenism in Safety

A Masters Degree in ‘Tick and Flick’

The Curse of Behaviourism

By What Method?

Humanising Workplace Health and Safety Management

Checklist Seduction and The Delusion of Data

Cultivating Resilience

The Challenges for Organisations in Dealing with Mental Health

More Posts from this Category

Subscribe to Blog via Email

Enter your email address and join other discerning risk and safety people who receive notifications of new posts by email

Join 7,422 other subscribers

How we pay for the high cost of running of this site – try it for free on your site

 

How To Make Your Own Hand Sanitizer

 

 

How to Make your own Covid-19 Face Mask

 

Covid-19 Returning To Work Safety, Transitioning, Start Up And Re Entry Plans

 

How’s the Hot Desking Going Covid?

imageOne of the benefits of the Covid-19 epidemic is a total rethink about how we live and work (https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-03-28/coronavirus-could-reshape-how-australians-work-forever/12097124 ).

Expertise by Regurgitation and Re-Badging

One of the fascinating things about the Coronavirus pandemic is watching Safety morph into epidemiology expertise. I would like a dollar for every flyer, presentation, podcast, powerpoint, checklist template, toolbox talk and poster set that had jumped into my inbox… Read the rest

The Stress of Stasis

One of the challenging things about the Coronavirus crisis is stasis. For those without work and confined to home, for those in self-isolation, it’s like life is frozen in time. ‘Stay at home’ is the mantra. The trouble is, in… Read the rest

loading Cancel
Post was not sent - check your email addresses!
Email check failed, please try again
Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email.