Bøger af Phillip K. Tompkins

Replication and Open Communication As Methods of Finding the Truth combines academic research with significant real world experiences that will surprise and amaze. In this book you will follow Dr. Tompkins' first-person narrative of moving from a failed replication of an experiment in a chemistry lab to his investigative work as he attempted to replicate the facts of Truman Capote in his "non-fiction novel" In Cold Blood. This search for replication resulted in Dr. Tompkins' article in Esquire Magazine titled In Cold Fact, which presented a detailed counter narrative of many of the facts in Capote's book. Replication and Open Communication as Methods of Finding The Truth continues with Dr. Tompkins work investigating and reporting on the causes of the Kent State Massacre. Hint: the lack of open communication played a major role. Dr. Tompkins describes his work as a consultant to Werhner Von Braun during the R& D phase of NASA's Moon Rocket Project where the principles of open communication and replication were significant to its success; and their lack in later space flights where Von Braun was not involved led to the tragedies of the Challenger and Columbia disasters. Dr. Tompkins' research and real world experiences described throughout this book found that replication and open communication, when combined, produced desired outcomes, including the truth. And the lack of them could produce disaster. All of this leads to Dr. Tompkins applying the methods of replication and open communication to other topics, such as second opinions in medicine, before reporting a stunning climactic discovery, the independent confirmation of findings dating to the 17th century when chemistry, i.e. science, was able to emerge out of the dark chaos of alchemy.

An account of the author's ten-year journey as a volunteer at the St Francis Center, a homeless shelter in Denver, Colorado. It shows how effective communication and organization can contribute to finding an end to homelessness and establishing a movement toward protective action, when a proactive local government gets involved.

Along with increased complexities in work and life in general in the twenty-first century come new and dangerous risks to workers, customers, and the general public. Drawing on decades of experience as a researcher and consultant for a range of organizations and individuals in high-risk domains, the author of this book presents a powerful theory of open communication and teamwork. This unites a range of communication practices and principles that have proven to combat risk and complexity in organizations.The book initially focuses on NASA, an organization that experiences and engages with high complexity and risk daily. As a participant-observer in the Apollo program, the author witnessed pioneering communication practices that, for example, empowered engineers with "e;automatic responsibility"e; for any technical problem they perceived. It was partly the failure to follow such protocols that resulted in the catastrophes experienced in the Challenger and Columbia tragedies, as the author shows.Using the lessons learned from the space program, the book then explores complexity and risk in medicine, aviation, the fighting of forest fires, and homelessness, again consistently finding communication practices that worked and did not work. Based on detailed research conducted over several decades, the book presents a unified theory linked to generally applicable communication practices. Case studies include the results of an international experiment of surgery conducted in ten countries that produced a highly significant reduction of deaths and infections in Africa, India, and other parts of the world, to the creation of innovative communication practices that significantly reduced risks in the US aviation industry.