The study showed that some industrial chemicals that were rare in the environment were absorbed more readily by the body than similar ones that were more common, providing clues that could avert mistaken regulatory crackdowns on the wrong compound, the scientists said.
The government reports hundreds of millions in losses every year, although the government appeared to do a better job at averting mistakes this year — it reported just $10 million in accidental losses in the past year, as opposed to nearly $60 million the year prior.
What difference a U.S. decision to engage with Khartoum would have made to intelligence gathering on Al Qaeda, preventing the August 1998 bombing of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, averting the mistaken 1998 U.S. cruise-missile attack on a pharmaceutical factory in Khartoum, and blocking the path to 9/11 is unclear.
It is not too late to avert a third mistake through a major interagency effort, pushed by both the administration and Congress, and better international coordination.
The measure approved today is intended to avert the kinds of mistakes and confusion that compromised the federal government's investigation into the collapse of the World Trade Center, Congressional officials said.
Perhaps most striking, it was not until recently, intelligence officials acknowledged on Friday, that the C.I.A. adopted changes designed to avert a repeat of the mistakes of the Iraq experience.
Perhaps most important, media companies are learning from the music industry's mistakes and trying to avert broader adoption of piracy techniques.
Had these diplomats listened to the voices reflected in our coverage perhaps some of their mistakes could have been averted.
There were also calls -- not just from Republicans -- to focus on averting future attacks rather than tracing intelligence mistakes.
The passive voice that allows a politician to avert the embarrassment of having to say "I goofed" is the classic "Mistakes were made".
