The Elevator Operator Syndrome
Adoption and cultural change: why trust in the physician "champion" matters more than the algorithm; the Stanislav Petrov case (1983).
The chapter names "the elevator operator syndrome" the human resistance to blindly trusting automation, even when it works well, and argues that AI adoption in healthcare depends less on the technical quality of the algorithm and more on trust in a physician "champion" who validates and explains the technology to colleagues. The counterpoint comes from the true story of Stanislav Petrov, the Soviet officer who in 1983 used human judgment to doubt a nuclear-attack alert generated by an automated system and, by not blindly following the machine, averted a catastrophe. The lesson: good technology does not dispense with trained human judgment willing to question it.