that are significantly impeded due to a lack of resources in the face of a societal
emergency”, this new concept of nuclear safety insist on the link between engineering
processes and social contingencies. In this paper we therefore try to shade a light on
collaborative process where social scientist and engineers come to work together
(more than side to side) in order to seek determinants of successful collaborations.
The paper focuses on an historical case: the (so called) Swiss Cheese Model of
accidents. Since the early 1990, the Swiss Cheese Model (SCM) of the psychologist
James Reason has established itself as a reference model in the etiology, investigation
or prevention of industrial accidents. Its success in many fields (transport, energy,
medical) has made it the vector of a new paradigm of Safety Science: the organizational accident. A comprehensive literature review of Reason’s work leads us to
consider the SCM as the result of a complex (and poorly documented) collaboration
process between the fields of research and industry; human sciences and engineering
sciences. In a dualistic premise where research and industry would be two entities
interacting but still separable, this collaboration would be understood as the appropriation of research work by the industrial world. However, the complexity of the
genesis of the SCM forces an overcoming of this dualism to bring out a process of
“co-production” of knowledge. As part of this research, the two main “fathers” of the
SCM: James Reason (psychologist and theorist of human error) and John Wreathall
(nuclear engineer) where interviewed by the author. These meetings shed a new light
on a prolific era for the Safety Sciences field. We therefore hope to keep from a
retrospective bias that tends to smooth and simplify facts. This chapter deals with the
induced effects of the collaboration between a psychologist and an engineer in terms
of models production. In the first section, we briefly present the two “fathers” of the
SCM and the social and historical context in which their collaboration took place. In
the second section, we focus on the effects of this collaboration over their intellectual
and scientific productions. Note that prior knowledge of the SCM, its theoretical
foundations and its main uses is requested (see, for example Larouzée et al. [2]).
2 The Fathers of the Model
This section presents the two fathers of the SCM. Reason a psychologist of human
error and Wreathall a nuclear engineer. After presenting their backgrounds (Sects. 1
and 2), we present the social and industrial context in which they were brought to
meet and work to create the first version of the SCM (Sect. 3).
2.1 James Reason, the Psychologist
Reason gets a degree in psychology at Manchester University in 1962. He then
works on aircraft cockpit ergonomics for the (UK) Royal Air Force and the US
258
J. Larouzée
emergency”, this new concept of nuclear safety insist on the link between engineering
processes and social contingencies. In this paper we therefore try to shade a light on
collaborative process where social scientist and engineers come to work together
(more than side to side) in order to seek determinants of successful collaborations.
The paper focuses on an historical case: the (so called) Swiss Cheese Model of
accidents. Since the early 1990, the Swiss Cheese Model (SCM) of the psychologist
James Reason has established itself as a reference model in the etiology, investigation
or prevention of industrial accidents. Its success in many fields (transport, energy,
medical) has made it the vector of a new paradigm of Safety Science: the organizational accident. A comprehensive literature review of Reason’s work leads us to
consider the SCM as the result of a complex (and poorly documented) collaboration
process between the fields of research and industry; human sciences and engineering
sciences. In a dualistic premise where research and industry would be two entities
interacting but still separable, this collaboration would be understood as the appropriation of research work by the industrial world. However, the complexity of the
genesis of the SCM forces an overcoming of this dualism to bring out a process of
“co-production” of knowledge. As part of this research, the two main “fathers” of the
SCM: James Reason (psychologist and theorist of human error) and John Wreathall
(nuclear engineer) where interviewed by the author. These meetings shed a new light
on a prolific era for the Safety Sciences field. We therefore hope to keep from a
retrospective bias that tends to smooth and simplify facts. This chapter deals with the
induced effects of the collaboration between a psychologist and an engineer in terms
of models production. In the first section, we briefly present the two “fathers” of the
SCM and the social and historical context in which their collaboration took place. In
the second section, we focus on the effects of this collaboration over their intellectual
and scientific productions. Note that prior knowledge of the SCM, its theoretical
foundations and its main uses is requested (see, for example Larouzée et al. [2]).
2 The Fathers of the Model
This section presents the two fathers of the SCM. Reason a psychologist of human
error and Wreathall a nuclear engineer. After presenting their backgrounds (Sects. 1
and 2), we present the social and industrial context in which they were brought to
meet and work to create the first version of the SCM (Sect. 3).
2.1 James Reason, the Psychologist
Reason gets a degree in psychology at Manchester University in 1962. He then
works on aircraft cockpit ergonomics for the (UK) Royal Air Force and the US
258
J. Larouzée