Law of unintended consequences

The field of Systems Dynamics studies counter-intuitive social systems where the result of an action is exactly the opposite of what you would expect. 

The typical result of this surprisingly common problem is that policy makers may see a problem which they don't realize is caused by their own actions, and therefore increase that action precisely when they should be decreasing it.

The classic paper in this field is Jay Forrester's congressional testimony:
 "The Counterintutive Behavior of Social Systems",
http://web.mit.edu/sdg/www/D-4468-2.Counterintuitive.pdf

Quoting the abstract:

Society becomes frustrated as repeated attacks on deficiencies in social systems lead only to worse symptoms. Legislation is debated and passed with great hope, but many programs prove to be ineffective. Results are often far short of expectaions Because dynamic behavior of social systems is not understood, government programs often cause exactly the reverse of desired results.

The Systems Dynamics Society is working to make that type of understanding much more common among all educational levels, including K-12.  Schools of Public Health have now included "Systems Thinking" in the "MPH Core Curriculum", as of this year.

Still, penetration of these skills into routine use is going agonizingly slowly. The original work was published over 50 years ago.   Only in March, 2006 did "Systems Thinking" make it to the American Journal of Public Health.

One thing that is clear is that the simple process of meeting together to organize what is known and make a qualitative "causal loop diagram" is often very valuable even in its own right. (See "Business Dynamics" by John Sterman.)

The US has a full Master's and PhD program in System Dynamics at Worcester Polytechic Institute in Massachusetts, with a distance-learning option.

The British have made somewhat more progress, and an excellent review is here rearding system dynamics and the UK National Health System ( NHS ) written by Eric Wolstenholme.

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