The first news story you quote included a mention of the long-standing allegation that the supercollider will generate a growing black hole and destroy the Earth. That story is popular with the press, even though it originated with the cranks and it's hard to find sensible scientists that believe it. If that's the "problems" that might be disclosable, well, it's been a subject of discussion for years already. It was a subject of discussion before they broke ground, and for a long time before that. So it's been "disclosed".
If OTOH you're referring to their bad transformer, wiring problems and liquid helium leaks, as far as I know those were announced to the press within a day of discovery, or maybe sooner.
Probably every industry has one or two well-known situations annually that would fit your general discussion-construct, though. I'm worried about the estrogen-mimicking of bisphenol A, used in food can linings and water bottles (very common but not relevant to my employer) and in all sorts of rigid transparent injection-molded medical devices and carbon-fiber-epoxy composites (both very relevant to my employer). I also worry about phthalate plasticizers used in flexible vinyl plastics. It's the classic "unquantifiable-but-small-risk-of-very-great-harm" risk management problem.
Actually, the part of the story which caught my attention was:
On Thursday, the organization said the collider — the world's largest — malfunctioned within hours of its launch to great fanfare, but its operator didn't report the problem for a week.
As I was reading more and more about the latest "food adulteration"
(China's milk/melamine today, but it could have been anything, since even one of Japan's most prestigious milk producers had a similar scandal EIGHT YEARS AGO - see below), it occurs to me the worst part about these scandals is always how the culprits and even the government regulators create even more fear and panic by trying to limit the news and almost always, the first reports include some phrase to the effect the "problem" poses no danger to the public. Yet, the problem continues to get more and more horrific as news leaks out about the actual damage, and how widespread the problem really is, even to the point where fear mongers spread the panic by starting false rumors for their own nefarious benefit.
I'm savvy enough to know "some" folks are actively selling shares short on dozens of companies having anything to do with China's dairy industry while simultaneously buying up shares in companies which have zero links to China's foodstuff industry. That alone doesn't make them bad, but there are also those few individuals who are out there actively repeating any damaging stories and adding "enhancements" to make the problems seem even more horrific and widespread.
If the culprits and the regulators would be less secretive, the rumor mongers would be less able to unroll "conspiracy" theories about how the culprits and the regulators are in cahoots.
These "coverups" never work in the long term, because the story ultimately DOES come out, sometimes inflicting even worse damage on the companies which first sought to hide the problem and, certainly, individuals and executive teams within the culprit companies often have permanent damage to their careers as a result of being involved.
We in the Quality industry have a responsibility to the truth. Often, that responsibility is overshadowed by our own fears of reprisal if we speak a truth the bosses don't want heard. Some time back, we covered this topic at great length in the thread
Ethics - Moral law vs. Criminal law .
So . . . I can understand [but not condone] an individual working for the company who bites his tongue and doesn't speak up, but I absolutely have no sympathy or understanding for the government regulators in ANY country who go along with the idea of "controlling" the extent of the disclosure.
Here in America, we just finished a news cycle about recalling dangerous baby cribs and the recurring theme as the story grew and grew was that government regulators meekly went along with the culprit companies in trying to keep a lid on the extent of the disclosure and recall.
Worse, some news outlets willingly went along with a theme the culprits tried to peddle that anyone who feared for their child's life or well-being was a "crank" talking about a "remote possibility" even in the face of the truth that the story emerged because children had actually died.
What do we Quality professionals need to do?
As I see it, our first responsibility is to educate EVERYBODY, bosses, politicians, and, especially, consumers, about the importance of PREVENTIVE measures to ensure life, health, safety of end users of any product. That taught, we need to help those same people learn how to investigate to ensure preventive measures are in place to protect them. That means we DO NOT lump in honest mistakes with criminal acts. An honest mistake needs to be disclosed as soon and as widely as possible to maintain confidence the system "works."
Criminal, purposeful acts can be limited by a system of checks and balances, reasoning the cost of the checks and balances saves money in the long run - I imagine the lifetime care of the thousands of children affected by this latest food adulteration in China will far outweigh the criminal profit the bad folks
[who introduced melamine into the foodstream] have made. I am equally certain the cost for the kind of routine checks for quality which may have detected food adulteration would have been MUCH less than what the OEM companies will pay in reparations to afflicted victims of the melamine.
My current understanding of the reasoning for introducing melamine into the food chain is that it gives a false positive for protein content of the food, allowing the criminal to dilute the product with water and thus sell greater volume of product, essentially selling water at milk prices.
To my way of thinking, the folks who SOLD the melamine are equally culpable with the ones who bought it and put it in the food chain. Perhaps part of the preventive measure might be to determine what products can give false positive readings for desired qualities and, first, establish a method to test for adulteration and second, put producers of the substance on notice (much as American producers of the substance pseudoephedrine (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudoephedrine) are put on notice to limit who may purchase and how much quantity at a time may be purchased.
One requirement which would help a lot is true traceability and "chain-of-custody" data on every product, a process which is becoming economically feasible because of computers, advances in printing micro bar and 2-D codes of products. Hard data from such traceability would help limit recalls to actual suspected nonconforming products instead of wide recalls of EVERYTHING.
The best part, in my estimation, is the actual savings from using such a program can be demonstrated, especially when you throw in the psychological VALUE to lure customers to a supply chain which displays such attention to ensuring customer safety.
I don't advocate punishing mistakes, but I sure do advocate punishing purposeful fraud and harmful activity.
First death reported in Japan's milk scandal
Last Updated: Friday, November 10, 2000| 11:57 PM ET
(broken link removed)
Japan's contaminated milk crisis is getting worse and may now be responsible for one death. The problems started two weeks ago when infected milk was sold by Japan's leading producer. But now the whole dairy industry is under suspicion. And the Japanese public is questioning the safety of all its food.
An 84-year-old woman who became sick after drinking tainted milk more than two weeks ago has died.
Police say she may be the first fatality in a contaminated milk crisis that has made about 14,000 people ill. They're now considering charges against Japan's leading milk producer of negligence, resulting in death.
The company, Snowbrand, has closed all 21 of its plants in Japan and they'll be inspected next week by government health officials.
Now other milk companies are also coming under suspicion after media reports that hygiene standards throughout the industry are lax.
Media reports suggest that the Japanese public, which used to think that its food industry had among the highest safety standards in the world, is very concerned.
The latest batch of media reports include a dairy company in the north of Japan which recalled packages of cheese tainted with pvc (polyvinyl chloride) — and a noodle maker in southwest Japan who recalled 150,000 packs of mouldy spaghetti.
but in the same vein.