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On 5 Oct 1995, Stuart Masch wrote: > Is it possible for NOAA, US NAVY, DCIEM, Australian Navy, HSE, other > institutions, all the agencies, all the divers, essentially, most of the > conventional wisdom to be "wrong", and Mr. Irvine to be "right"? > > Of course it is. > > But it's not likely. Hmmm.....unfortunately, every point that contradicts the 'conventional wisdom' of the time is first pushed by some champion who is percieved as wrong simply because their point of view contradicts the conventional wisdom. Science is replete with these examples. Copernicus and Galileeo come to mind. In this case, the statements that the current PPO2 limits, including short burst excesses may be 'too close to the envelope' have been around for a while. I suspect that George may be the first person who has vocally stated that folks who support the current limits must justify their position in the face of anecdotal morbidity evidence. He is certainly not the first person to believe (and state) that various agencies are not doing a good job of supervising their divers or instructors, or perhaps that they are providing inadequate training. > And unfortunately he's lost as much credibility in his ability to *communicate* > as if he were speaking a foreign language. In the business that I'm in, we call this emotionalism. George seems to be quote emotional over this particular issue. When someone who is emotional approaches management, management has two choices. They can ignore the emotionalism, or they can evaluate the chain of events that led to the emotionalism. Sometimes you are just dealing with an emotional person, and sometimes the person has reasons for their emotionalism. I've seen some justification in this group for George's emotionalism. > One cannot force people to understand or agree. Ultimately, "right" or > "correct" is nothing but a point of view. And, clearly, those who wouldn't > agree with that are just plain wrong, aren't they? :) I'm concerned about this statement. I believe that it is wrong. I believe that that as far as tech diving (or perhaps any diving) goes, there are three classes of behaviour: 1. Behaviour that is, for a given dive profile, more dangerous (likely to result in accident or morbidity for the diver or another diver) than other behaviour. 2. Behaviour that is, for a given dive less dangerous, than other behaviour. 3. Behaviour that is neither more or less likely to result in accident or morbidity. Only the third class of behaviour falls into that area where right is just a point of view. I believe that George's point was that the agencies are teaching what I'll call class 1 behaviour, and that he might call strokery. Technical Nitrox to 170', and deep air to 160' (think about it---you can dive deep air to 160' or you can add O2 to it and dive it to 170'--what is wrong with that picture?) are class 1 behaviour. Rod certainly dives deep air. He has the right to do so. George believed that PPN2 in excess of about 4ATA (130 feet on air) had side effects in addition to those caused by the direct effects of nitrogen that we normally think of (narcosis and DCS). Rod isn't the only one who can point, anecdotally to deep air dives. Certainly the deep air diving done by the Thorfinn crowd on Truk represents a long history of relatively low accident, short duration deep air diving. However, I still believe that arguments of this sort are similar to those of the 16 year old who doesn't believe that sex causes pregnancy because she has been with her boyfriend 20-30 times and hasn't gotten pregnancy. Technical recreational diving is a new field. It simply hasn't been out of the back rooms for that long, and for us to defend existing practice because it is existing practice at this point is clearly premature. IMHO, it is much like tossing a coin and then defending the fact that it came up as heads. There is simply not enough of a body of evidence and experience behind it, so far as I'm concerned, to buy off on any particular practice without some serious justification. It concerns me that the agencies have started defending current practice as if it were cast in stone. If we have accumulated so much inertia in technical diving so quickly, it makes me worry that there is just something wrong with the institutions. George would be easier to listen to if he was a little more soft spoken. I've told him this myself, more than once, and the list maintainer as besically told him the same thing, as have others. His manner of presenting his message is rough, and emotional. He may well be wrong in expressing himself in the way he does, and his emotionalism may detract from his message, making it harder to read, and less effective. The agencies are responsible for training a large number of technical divers. If they can't get over the emotionalism that George (or anyone else) brings to the table, and respond rationally to the arguments behind the emotionalism (with better than "we've always done it this way, so it must be right. Non-recreational agencies do it this way, so it must be right." which in my mind equates to "we tossed the coin and it came up tails, so it must be right") then they shouldn't be at the table, or training divers, at all. At this point in the life cycle of technical diving, anyone (including George) has to be ready to justify their practice with reasons, and can't rationally refuse to do so. Or they lose credibility. If the people who are running the tech agencies can't get past and through emotions to facts, they are not qualified for the positions they are in. Nick Simicich - njs@sc*.em*.ne* - (last choice) njs@bc*.vn*.ib*.co* http://scifi.emi.net/njs.html -- Stop by and Light Up The World!
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