Monday, March 9, 2015
Experiment
The great physicist Richard Feynman stated that
“The test of all knowledge is experiment.
Experiment is the sole judge of scientific truth.” Despite his well known presence on the panel
examining the Challenger space shuttle disaster, Dr. Feynman was not a risk
manager. It is rare in (business) risk
that we get to do experiments.
Furthermore, even if we could do experiments we would find almost all of
the results inconclusive. Unlike
physics, risk management is not a physical science. It is a social science. As such, the laws of nature underlying
business risk management are not exact nor are they reproducible. People and organizations change their minds
and they change their strategies, tactics and actions – sometimes for reasons
that are completely unknown. Fortunately
or unfortunately, as risk managers we do not have the power of experiment to
develop our knowledge. Thus I suspect
Richard Feynman would consider risk management a science in name only – and I
am ok with that.
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