Topic: Sulfur Testing

An anecdote from the 1970s describes a technician at a refinery who accidentally miscalculated sulfur levels in crude oil by a factor of ten, causing a plant-wide panic. Rather than admitting the error, the technician gradually "backed off" the numbers in subsequent tests by 20% increments until the levels appeared normal. This story serves as a metaphor for how government agencies may be currently managing the decline of pandemic data to avoid admitting previous errors.