Principle of Multiple Causes

The principle of multiple causes states Accidents, near-miss incidents, and other problems are seldom, if ever, the result of a single cause. 

This means that accidents caused by a failure in the management system are often caused by a number of items or multiple events. Accidents have often been defined 

Traditionally the only reasons for accident investigations were to appropriate blame and find a guilty party. This will never solve the problem or determine the root causes of downgrading events, and will not fix the real cause of the problem. This is termed prescription without diagnosis. Finding one cause of an accident is totally insufficient, as there are always a number of reasons for an action or incident. 

As stated by the principle of definition, if the real causes of accidents and near-miss incidents are not found, how can real solutions be proposed If all the contributing factors are not investigated, how can the causes of the events be identified and rectified  

The principle of multiple causes states that accidents, near miss incidents, and other problems are seldom, if ever, the result of a single cause. This pertains to near miss incident investigation, which in itself is another vitally important criterion of any safety system. If the investigation system is not structured and does not follow the loss causation sequence and determines both the immediate and root causes of the event, the system is basically worthless. 

Many investigators fear delving deeper into the causes of an event as this may open a can of worms. As mentioned previously, a NEMIRR system cannot work unless management and the organization declare amnesty and create an environment within which employees can report near miss incidents confidently, and where investigations can delve into all the causes, irrespective of what will be uncovered. 

The following excerpt is from the author s book, Changing Safety s Paradigms (2007)  

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These four historic defenses were the beginning of the shirking of, and excuses for, safety responsibility. By putting the blame on the worker, the safety burden is shifted to the employees, and statements such as The majority of injuries are as a result of the unsafe behavior of the worker reinforce this incorrect assumption and misdirect well-intended safety efforts. Safety culture shift involves recognizing the principle of multiple causes and forces employers to look beyond the injured worker to seek root causes of accidents. 

The principle of multiple causes indicates that accidents and near miss incidents are usually the result of multiple causes. Investigations should not cease until all the contributing causes have been identified. Once all the obvious causes are found, a root cause analysis should be conducted to delve into the root causes of the problem. Only by identifying and rectifying the root causes wiU the problem be solved. 

The principle of multiple causes indicates that accidents are usually the result of a multitude of causes and there are usually many immediate causes and numerous root causes behind every event. 

Progressive companies use a more structured and comprehensive team approach to identify root causes. Scientific principles and concepts are applied to determine root causes and make recommendations to prevent recurrence. Effective investigations should use tested data analysis tools and methodologies to seek the identification of multiple causes. To be repeatable, the investigation should use a systematic approach, which may also be prescriptive. As a rule, the benefits of this systematic approach result from two actions ... 

In a complex such as the sulfate ion the sulfuiMjxygen bond assumes multiple-bond character through resonance involving one sigma bond and two pi bonds. An empirical equation has been formulated connecting interatomic distances and bond number for resonance of this sort. On application of this equation it is found that in many complexes the amounts of multiple-bond character are such as to cause all atoms to conform rather closely to the principle of electroneutrality. 

A brief discussion of sohd-liquid phase equihbrium is presented prior to discussing specific crystalhzation methods. Figures 20-1 and 20-2 illustrate the phase diagrams for binary sohd-solution and eutectic systems, respectively. In the case of binary solid-solution systems, illustrated in Fig. 20-1, the liquid and solid phases contain equilibrium quantities of both components in a manner similar to vapor-hquid phase behavior. This type of behavior causes separation difficulties since multiple stages are required. In principle, however, high purity... 

Causal Trees were developed in an effort to use the principles of deductive logic found in Fault Tree but make it more user-friendly. Originally, private companies developed the Causal Tree Method (CTM) for safety, process safety, and environmental incident investigations applications. Rhone-Poulenc, for example, was an early user.<20.21) Multiple-Cause Systems Oriented Incident Investigation (MCSOfl) is another name for the CTM. At this time, most companies use simplified versions of fault trees for complex incident investigations. 

Rohm and Haas uses Multiple-Cause, Systems-Oriented Incident Investigation techniques (MCSOII), or mac-soy. It is a direct adaptation of the Fault Tree Analysis logic and the Deming Principles of Systems and Quality. [10] The method was developed to improve the overall quality of investigations, to increase the uniformity of investigation made by various teams, and improve the usefulness of the proposed corrective actions. The quality of the mac-soy or MCSOII investigation is improved because the method [10]... 

An inconvenient but more descriptive name for this MS is intermittent, patchy demyelination. This clumsy term makes clear that multiple sclerosis is unlikely to be a single entity in terms of cause (etiology) or disease mechanisms (pathophysiology). In principle, any conditions or combination of conditions that lead to intermittent, patchy demyelination are forms of multiple sclerosis. If a clear cause can be identified, the condition is by convention not referred to as multiple sclerosis. The disease is therefore by definition of unclear etiology. The neurology literature of the last 100 years contains confident declarations that multiple sclerosis has been proven to be a viral disease, that it has been proven not to be a viral disease, that it has been proven to be an immune disease, that immune mechanisms in multiple sclerosis have been shown to be secondary to the disease process, and so on. 

In QSAR and QSPR studies, the standard ways of removing redundancy from large numbers of topological and topographical indices include principal component analysis, chi-squared analysis, and multiple regression analysis (MRA). Most QSAR and QSPR applications deal with very small datasets, and so the dimensionality does not cause a problem for PCA or chi-squared analysis. MRA does not impose any restrictions on the type and number of descriptors. The selection process is based on two principles, namely, to cover as much of parametric space as possible (principle of variance) while choosing independent descriptors (principle of orthogonality). 

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