By Naomi Oreskes
Dr. Oreskes is a professor of the history of science at Harvard and the author of “Science on a Mission: How Military Funding Shaped What We Do and Don’t Know About the Ocean.”
As details emerged about the implosion last week of the Titan submersible in its descent to the wreck of the Titanic nearly two and a half miles below the surface of the North Atlantic, there was widespread anger that its owner and pilot knowingly took civilians on an uncertified vessel to a depth of crushing pressure.
The billionaire investor Ray Dalio, who founded the ocean exploration company OceanX with his son, Mark, expressed what he described on Twitter as his “great anger.” He accused Stockton Rush, the chief executive of OceanGate, who was piloting the Titan, of “reckless disregard for tried-and-true safety protocols that have made manned submersible exploration extremely safe.” Within the oceanography community, that view was widely held. Read more at the NY Times…
