“Man-Made Disaster” Not Made By Humans?

Jena McNeill / January 04, 2010

When Secretary Janet Napolitano used the word “man-made disaster” to describe the current terrorist threat facing Americans, you would have thought that she understood that terrorists aren’t machines and are in fact human. It comes as a surprise then that the Obama Administration is rumored to have set its laser on killing the DHS Science and Technology Directorate’s human factors research budget.

What is “human factors research”, you ask? It is a fancy term for studying the way humans behave and interact—humans like Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab—the man now dubbed as the recent Christmas Day “underwear bomber.” Science tends to suggest that by studying the way humans operate, the U.S. can better predict what their next choices might be, and perhaps help to stop them from doing things like blowing up airplanes. This information would be handy for a whole host of homeland security functions. But DHS seems to have decided that this type of information isn’t very useful—and that the directorate should focus on other endeavors deemed more important. (more…)