> >Some of you may be interested in an article (106 pages) on the economics of lab accidents.

It is interesting that their method focuses on the 'lab head's' career"
"Ultimately, we make use of 102 adverse events, which caused heterogeneous physical capital loss to more than twice as many laboratories. We focus on the "lab head" as our unit of observation‰?|. On average, simple and impact-weighted publication counts decline by 16% and 21%, respectively. These negative effects are remarkably persistent: even 20 years after the adverse event, the average lab head's productivity shows no sign of recovery."

My experience in helping to address recovery from lab events is that the results are very dependent on the institution's level of support towards the specific 'lab head' involved and how much assistance the institution provides in the recovery process. Noone I observed saw no impact on their career productivity after the loss of a lab or specialized lab equipment, but some people were returned to service as quickly as possible and their staff were subsidized during recovery, whereas others had years of delay in the recovery process, as well as the loss of essentially their entire lab staff during that delay. Personally, I still think of science as a team sport rather than built on individual heroes.

- Ralph

Ralph Stuart, CIH, CCHO
ralph**At_Symbol_Here**rstuartcih.org

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