A few hours after the Genesis probe crashed into the Utah desert, NASA held a press briefing. The disappointment on the four project managers' faces was heart wrenching. You had to feel for them; they had just lost several years of their lives in the last few seconds of the mission.

Maintaining their record of utter predictability, the journalists launched their assault.

"Who's to blame for the crash?"
"I thought parachutes were very reliable, why aren't yours?"
"How are you going to stop from screwing up future missions?"

The project managers remained polite and professional, but you could see their frustration. Every question was targeted to entice negative, accusational, and hurtful comments.

Why do journalists always do that? Why are they only looking for one answer and always the dirty, nasty, cruel one? Do journalists really think all we ever want to hear is the negative side of things?

How refreshing would it be for one of them to ask, "So what are some of the positive things that could result from this failure?" "How much valuable data was collected during the mission before re-entry?"

Update - Just released from NASA last week; "Scientists who conducted the preliminary assessment of the Genesis canister are encouraged by what they see. They believe it may be possible to achieve the most important portions of their science objectives."

That's got to give the media the "rub".

Let's take a different scenario. Let's assume that our local baseball team's batting average is only 0.250, so the head coach hires a new batting coach. Then 2 months later the teams batting average drops to 0.200 instead of getting better.

The obvious answer is that the batting coach sucks and should be fired immediately. Ask no questions, its' obvious. At least, that is the conclusion most people would jump to.

But could there be multiple answers?

• A- Maybe the best batters on the team were recently traded
• B- The opponents are now only using their best pitchers because the team started to hit much better
• C- Maybe the best 3 hitters have been sick
• D- All the above

There are always multiple answers to any question. And if you want to find the best answers, keep asking the question. Your first answer is not always the best.

Try this simple experiment. Watch the news tonight and listen to a story. Pick any one you want and listen for the commentary in the form of, "XYZ news has just obtained information A, so obviously B must be true." Write it down and try to come up with multiple answers for B with some being completely opposite of what the journalist concluded or implied. Is it possible that, based on the same information, your conclusions are just as plausible as that of the journalist?

Of course you can.

Remember this exercise at work next time you think the answer is obvious. If you can only come up with one answer to the question, it's probably wrong.

Mark L. Fox
Discover Something New