System safety: Technology and application, 2nd edition: Sol W. Malasky. Garland STPM press, New York, 1982. 329 pp. $57.50

✍ Scribed by Ludwig Benner Jr.

• Book ID: 102620377
• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1983
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 194 KB
• Volume: 15
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0001-4575
• DOI: 10.1016/0001-4575(83)90058-1

✦ Synopsis

or the British Medical Association that sets out to alter the moral significance of a mode of behavior-for reasons of public health. safety. justice. bureaucratic advantage or what have you-must succeed in a competition for the attention of newsmakers. opinion leaders. and the public at large. So long as public attention is held and focused. the behavior will respond to moral pressure; when the attention fades, this pressure recedes. and ths behavior regresses. The paradoxical perceptual apparatus that Ross mobilizes seems to me beside the point; but to be Solomonic.

I would amend his call for research on how threats are perceived to include research on how moral conceptions change. This personal reservation to the side, Ross has published a handsome increment to his continuing salutary influence on policy research on drunk driving and deterrence in general.